Letter from the Producer LXII

[Cylestea]

I see what you are saying. But what I was saying it was an odd decision to make two races with one gender. instead of one race with two. And we have all seen the male Viera concept art.

Its a old one and most likely the ivalice teams didn't approve of it. I'm sure once we seen them in a game set in ivalice you can look forward to them in this mmo. But for now just wait and be happy we have 2 new races that have a chance to be expanded on later. Be happy they giving us this not just recolored races like WoW keeps getting.

[griffinborn]

I see what you are saying. But what I was saying it was an odd decision to make two races with one gender. instead of one race with two.

They still met two requests: players who've wanted Viera and players who've wanted bestial races. It's not like the devs gave us something people didn't ask for.

[Alucard135]

1. The Cost of Developing a New Playable Race
In a Fan Festival keynote speech, I stated that this will likely be the last time we add new playable races to FFXIV. To put it simply, a tremendous amount of time and resources are required to develop one. I’m sure you all understand that a new race will require new faces, hairstyles, bodies, and other assets. In addition to this, they need to be capable of equipping all existing items—this alone requires a massive commitment of resources. Each race has a unique frame and body type, and so every piece of visible equipment needs to be carefully adjusted to display properly on Hrothgar and Viera models. A cursory search will show that FFXIV has around ten thousand equippable items already implemented, all of which must be manually modified by our designers. This is an immediate and unavoidable development cost incurred when adding a new race.

The addition of new playable races will impact more than the development cost of the items added in 5.1 and subsequent updates. Not only will we be transitioning from twelve variations (six races, two genders each) to fourteen, but we will also need to commit more resources to the development of new emotes. While FFXIV will continue to strive to maintain a regular 3.5 month major update cycle, we must also ensure that sufficient time is secured for the meticulous development of new content—or else the quality will invariably drop. This is a complex problem that can’t be solved simply by throwing more money or people at it, as it impacts both debugging and QA.

In summary, these are the circumstances which informed my previous statement that this is likely to be the last time we add new playable races; as at this point in time, it is difficult to see us maintaining our patch update schedule if we have to account for more than seven races and two genders (technically six races with two genders and two races with a single gender, but this is the functional equivalent).
2. A Significant Number of Players Have Been Requesting Playable Viera
Since this may be the last time we add new races, we spent a long time deliberating which race would be the best addition. Fans worldwide have shown an overwhelming desire for FFXII’s Viera, and we have long been aware of this fact. In fact, we considered adding Viera back in Heavensward, but eventually decided that, since that was FFXIV’s first expansion, we should instead add an all-new original race—the Au Ra. If we were to add yet another race rather than the Viera, we anticipated that many fans would be disappointed, and so we decided to try and satisfy their request in this expansion. The desire to please our fans is the primary reason behind this decision.
3. Providing a More Beastly Variety for FFXIV Character Creation and World Building
After seeing the positive reception of the Lupin characters we introduced in Stormblood, we concluded that, for the long-term health of FFXIV, it was important to implement a greater variety of character types beyond the traditionally beautiful in a future expansion. In truth, we had considered adding more beastly characters long before, and since this was possibly our last chance to do so, we decided that we should—much like we did with the Viera—in the interests of expanding the lore and the choices available to players.

The same reasons that some have been saying over and over here and yet, they were labeled sexists and homophobes.

[Vnolan]

3.The Present Balance Between Tanks and Healers
Since we currently have four melee DPS jobs, we decided to hold off on developing another and instead added a new tank.

Tanks in FFXIV are often utilized in either a main tank or off-tank role. However, we currently have an odd number of tank jobs, and we felt it that it would be easier to balance them moving forward if we had an even number of tanks, which is why we went with gunbreaker in the end.

Moreover, ever since we added astrologian with Heavensward, we have had considerable difficulty in balancing it along with white mage and scholar. Rather than exacerbate a complex situation by adding a fourth healer to the mix, we decided to instead prioritize balancing the three existing healer jobs at this time.

May 2017

Q: We'd like to hear any stories about the selection and development of red mage and samurai!
A: Red mage was announced first, but during the development we chose samurai first. In terms of roles, we thought it would be more important to focus on balancing the existing tanks and healers; therefore, we decided to go with melee DPS for the STR slot, and ranged magic DPS for the INT slot.

[Vanitas]

That is one fresh looking hrothgar.

[Alucard135]

That is one fresh looking hrothgar.

Kudos to them on that lol. It does give a new look to the game.

[Taybat]

They still met two requests: players who've wanted Viera and players who've wanted bestial races. It's not like the devs gave us something people didn't ask for.

I mean the people asking for male viera are far greater than female hrothgar. Just by looking at the forums

[reivaxe]

Good read and it sums up everything I've been saying for some time now.

The addition of races takes an extreme amount of commitment and its not just the development of them but also supporting them moving forward.

I think they misunderstood what the actual request was. It was a greater option of "cuter" males to choose from, since Lalafell and to a degree male Miqo'te are the only real options. Basically, a reverse sexual dimorphism from Au ra.
.

From what I've seen there's definitely a faction of male Viera fans asking for shota males. It's also one of the few things from the Japanese side of this forum that I read on their topic for the missing genders. I didn't read much on it but there was def people bringing up shota body types and others telling them NO

[MPK]

I'm so glad he addressed the under-aged ERPing. I really do hope they start cracking down on the people who are ERPing as young people.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

I mean the people asking for male viera are far greater than female hrothgar. Just by looking at the forums

There was also quite a big asking for a beast race. Its drowned out now by the "wahh no male viera" crowd, but it was there.

As for male viera, the Ivalice dev said he never said they couldn't have male viera and didn't really care either way.