Letter from the Producer LXII

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

They also took a 5 month break after the release of heavensward (well, a 2 month break that delayed the patch to 5 months instead of the usual 3.5). If I remember right some of the dev team at the time hadn't had a vacation or time off since the start of the rebuild for 2.0. Several years of that. And people complained.... A lot... That a patch was delayed a month and a half....

[Shougun]

By all means keep your reasoning and continue supporting them if that is how you feel just in my own experience in games the way this Dev Team interacts with the community is subpar, in my own experience at least, when compared to other Dev Teams and games I play. Still I will respect your position to praise them for it and believing in them even if I don't.

Fair response (Only responding to the part directed to me). I think part of the communication difference from what we may normally expect is the whole Japanese/English divide, but that said I do wish we could hear and interact more in some way. Maybe they need more devs that speak English comfortably enough to interface or give our CMs more power, not sure. While wonderful I can imagine whoever gets that job will also get loads of stress and flak though, as is the nature of the internet lol, so hope those that enter are prepared XD.

I do feel feedback is worth it though, I've seen a number of things go in that I feel are unlikely to have been purely coincidental (some could have been).

In other news, I may be finally using one of my ancient dusty fantasia (still have all my freebies lol). Will be quite something to get the benchmark and see how that goes.

[Physic]

I'm sorry but I will have to heavily disagree with giving them praise in any regards if they can't even meet the bare minimum of the MMO standard. Were they owned by a Med Sized Developer or an actual Indie team that somehow is pushing out AAA quality on an MMO then yes I would praise them but the reality is that they're not. I will not praise subpar standards from a AAA dev.

I will not stop you from praising them as this is your view though, if you feel they deserve it then more power to you but I have made my stance clear.



By all means keep your reasoning and continue supporting them if that is how you feel just in my own experience in games the way this Dev Team interacts with the community is subpar when compared to other Dev Teams and games I play. Still I will respect your position to praise them for it and believing in them even if I don't.

exactly what par are you comparing it to? most AAA games dont even have 6 races. Also Every decision has a cost, in time/money/effort the question is, is the effort of making more hats worth it in man hours, compared to whatever else you have to do?

as for budget, its not limitless, you will still have to make decisions based on the economy of creation.

[Emmanellain]

I think the real right answer is, races arent worth the effort. But they added some anyhow. This is why most games dont have seven races. Especially the higher the art quality. The truth is new races cost resources, not just up front, but on every gear you make. So adding races, usually decreases new gear, etc. added to the game. All that artist time could be used on new gears, customizations, enemies, etc. Is it worth it? probably depends on the player.

It's through your character you experience the entire game, there is a reason why people often start looking to the looks of the races when starting an MMO, if you bring in more variety, you get more happy customers.

Funny enough HW was made on a smaller budget compared to Stormblood, yet HW is still revered as the best expansion of the two we currently sit with and didn't have less armor despite bringing us a brand new race.
There is of course more variables to this, but new races =/= less armor sets. It ultimatively depends on their plans, I'd prefer more armor and filling the gaps of the new races to a ton of zones that will be empty after everyone goes through the MSQ anyhow.
I'd personally be happy with a handful of detailed zones, a ton of gear and two full new races if that meant cutting two zones or something, sadly it isn't that simple though.

[Emmanellain]

We should just ignore MorbolvampireQueen6 and get back to discussing the actual game at this point.

[PharisHanasaki]

A huge thank you to the dev team!
It makes me happy to see people so devoted to their game to secretly spend their free time on it.
I would've done the same, I'm just that kind of person, so it really brought a smile to my face.

Usually, very few people outside a dev team would thank anyone for working extra hard to make the impossible possible. As a developer, I know people who know absolutely nothing about code, or how dev works, think stuff can be done by just 'investing more money' or 'hiring better coders'. It couldn't be further from truth.

But they still go on about how more can be made when they absolutely got no clue how much time it takes to review thousands and thousands of items. Or even code new jobs, emotes, etc. While we still get regular free patches.

I know. I am grateful
Really, thank you team for your hard work!

[Luluna]

They both look so good I can't wait to try a Viera and try all the lovely hair they have! They are damned if they do they are damned if they don't. I am happy and looking forward to the expansion it looks the best so far to me. I have played a long time and this game has come on in leaps and bounds and as a older gamer I can say that waaayy back in the day there where no fancy graphics just imagination so I am happy lol.

[Physic]

You are correct in that regard in the sense of how much resources a new Race takes from a Dev Team but with that in mind you now need to question if its already a pain to make a new race for artists and modelers alike why did they decide to split it up into two new races instead of staggering one of the two out for 6.0 to ease their problems in 5.0? Would it have not made more sense to save these resources with assets they can reuse on both genders if they went All Hrothgar or All Viera? On top of that even the launch itself is still less than Heavensward which had a new Race and 3 Jobs instead of 2 Jobs and 2 Genderlocks. Baffling honestly.

And while an Appeal to Authority would be better than an Appeal to Nothing as you put it, the better argument to this would be introducing a logical reasoning as to why their actions were even good in regards to overall resource allocation, especially given they're sticking to the Safe and True formula? No one is saying the job isn't hard but to expect some consumers to accept subpar standards or unable to make a proper criticism would be foolish. I won't call the team lazy and open it up to such an easy appeal to authority but I will say their direction and overall prioritization of resources and idea is faulty at best.

there is little cost benefit to making the same race male and female, unless the male and female of the race has the same models/rigging. work wise, doing male and female viera, and doing male hrothgar female viera is not drastically different.

Also, the reason they decided to split them is they have no intention of doing the male viera or female hrothgar later. Therefore, the question was, if we can only do two more racexgenders, which 2 gives the most value to the game.

they have already said heavensward was a mistake, they bit off more than they could chew. Its like you asking your friend to move that couch again, when last time he injured his back and couldnt leave bed for two weeks.

Also, the cost of races increases as content increases. In heavensward, they may have had 1000 garments per racexgender and in shadowbringers they may have 1500, due to all the gear/armor added. that means each race is 50% more cost in time/manhours etc. Not only that, but increases the cost of making new gear after. before whenever you make gear you have to make/check/debug armor for 12 different models, after you need to 14. that increases the cost per new clothing by 16% There are means of reducing that, but not to zero.


the thing is, an appeal to authority is as valid as your authority is. Evaluate the authority to get an idea if the appeal is valid. The simplified logic/reasoning has been presented in his post. I am sure they have more detailed data, such as man hours spent per race in ARR vs in Shadowbringers, but most people dont need/want the underlying data.


the interesting thing is, the easiest solution to giving people more races, is to have less visual clothes per race, Ie, some new race simply has less old clothes, and not all new clothes. but as per your complaint, thats probably less acceptable than races not existing at all.

[FoxyAreku]

That is one handsome ass motherflippin Hrothgar.

Right? I was already going to switch but did think the hroths looked rather strange in the trailer, but with how good that boy looks my worries are squashed.

[Physic]

It's through your character you experience the entire game, there is a reason why people often start looking to the looks of the races when starting an MMO, if you bring in more variety, you get more happy customers.

Funny enough HW was made on a smaller budget compared to Stormblood, yet HW is still revered as the best expansion of the two we currently sit with and didn't have less armor despite bringing us a brand new race.
There is of course more variables to this, but new races =/= less armor sets. It ultimatively depends on their plans, I'd prefer more armor and filling the gaps of the new races to a ton of zones that will be empty after everyone goes through the MSQ anyhow.
I'd personally be happy with a handful of detailed zones, a ton of gear and two full new races if that meant cutting two zones or something, sadly it isn't that simple though.

new races does equal less armorsets, unless the races have the same model, posture, rigging. Or equals more cost per armor set. Even slightly altered models end up having bugs/clipping and need QA, some of which only show up with certain gear combinations.

charachter artists/animators are usually different than environmental artists, so basically you are choosing between charachter related stuff when you add races. this means, enemies, animations, armor, hairstyles etc.

anyhow, one zone may cost way less in manhourexpertise. its possible its like 1 hat vs 1 zone. and you might have to fire an environmental artist and hire a charachter artist to get it out in the same time frame.


to top that off, many people would disagree that a race was worth a large amount of content lost. How many man hours is a race vs a job i wonder...