Male Viera as a playable character! show your support

[Senn]

Thank you for your responses and keep it up.

As far as I know, the only thing holding back male viera and female hrothgar is Yoshida's concern with slow patch updates. For those of us who want male viera, this should be the key point of discussion right now. If enough people say they would not mind slower patches for male viera, it will show the devs we are very serious about wanting them in the game.

If you truly want male viera, please focus in on this key topic - accepting temporary slow patches for the inclusion of male viera and female hrothgar
Forum staff do read this thread. They do relay our feedback to Yoshida.

[Theodric]

Omg, I wouldn't mind if they never gave us another Eureka ever again, even if they didn't give us male Viera. Eureka was a mistake. lol

Thankfully Eureka has been confirmed to continue in 5.0. No doubt improvements will be made in the same way as how Heaven on High is a refined Palace of the Dead.

[reivaxe]

What about 4 month patch cycles? Perhaps we could compromise? That .5 month could make all the difference over time, and it would go back to normal once male viera and female hrothgar are done.

No, it would not "go back to normal" and there's no reason to think it would be as simple as adding 2 weeks.

Yoshi very clearly said something I've been saying all along, more races means everything related to characters permanently becomes harder and the time and resources needed to support the increase (support as in not just make them but also work on them along with the current races for all future things) would slow down content releases.

Gear, emotes, hair styles and so on all become harder to make moving forward because they will take more time.

[Gwenorai]

No, it would not "go back to normal" and there's no reason to think it would be as simple as adding 2 weeks.

Yoshi very clearly said something I've been saying all along, more races means everything related to characters permanently becomes harder and the time and resources needed to support the increase (support as in not just make them but also work on them along with the current races for all future things) would slow down content releases.

Gear, emotes, hair styles and so on all become harder to make moving forward because they will take more time.

That's the unfortunate path they've chosen in all honesty. It can certainly be argued that a bigger team would help as they'd be able to share the workload. But apparently, the issue is quality assurance - not so much workload?

[Veis_Alveare]

Thank you for your responses and keep it up.

As far as I know, the only thing holding back male viera and female hrothgar is Yoshida's concern with slow patch updates. For those of us who want male viera, this should be the key point of discussion right now. If enough people say they would not mind slower patches for male viera, it will show the devs we are very serious about wanting them in the game.

If you truly want male viera, please focus in on this key topic - accepting temporary slow patches for the inclusion of male viera and female hrothgar
Forum staff do read this thread. They do relay our feedback to Yoshida.

You're going to make male Viera a target with talk like this.

This game is already far too slow in terms of updates, slowing it down would end it especially for something which is essentially glam.

If you want support from more than a niche you shouldn't advocate for the rest of the game to suffer so that you get a thing you want, you're circling back around to selfish and entitled and it's only going to garner more heated opposition.

[Senn]

...

I thought the most time consuming thing would be gear. They would need a lot of time to have the gear fit on the models. However, I think this problem mostly stems from catching up with all the gear we have so far. Fitting all the older gear to the models would take a very long time.

However, after catching up and moving forward, there will still be extra time spent fitting the newer gear on the races, but I don't think it would take a ridiculous amount of time after the initial catch up.

On a side note, the dev team managed to make more than 540 head items available for viera and hrothgar. Does anyone have an estimate for how long this took?

[SoloWingMetatron]

I fully agree with your post. I dont think its good to try to want so many different people to play this game, especially since all of these need content to stay. Its why I dont understand why they are trying to make the PVP into something like e-sports..this is just simply not the game for it.

I am fine with them trying out new stuff to see what works, but then the question remains on why they do it that deeply? Why for example try out Eureka with four new islands? Why not try it with one or two? Already start it with the new systems and really look at the feedback. (And why are you already planning for more Eureka in the next expansion if the opinion about it is so heavly split?) Also sometimes it really starts to feel like they dont know how to create something very different from Diadem or something which is enjoyable on its own without needing relic weapons and other rewards to even motivate people to stick with it for a bit.

I also dont think that they are lazy (as in not working or something) but I do get the feeling that they might need more people with new ideas or a fresh creative view on it. Maybe with something that takes some time to finish (without it being a near impossible boring grind like some of the achievements..). If you have something that takes longer to complete and is fun for the majority you also wont need new content every three months..or at least you could just introduce these patches with story only and some small glamour updates.

And I also agree with your view on the new races. If they are the last one and should add variety why not go further out? Give Vieras more rabbit traits like their feets and a tail. And if that means that we cant wear headpieces..well I am quite sure that a lot of people would be fine with that.

I'm with you on all these points!

These days it feels like instead of providing content that offers real depth and enjoyment, they just throw the relic or some other desirable item behind a grind wall to make us play the content...I mean fair play to them, it works....I was stupid enough go complete all of Eureka for my SMN relic....however this was because I think it's one of the best SMN weapon designs to date.

After spending all that time in Eureka it just boiled down to a fate train with extra fluff to make it seem fleshed out but in reality provided no new or useful element. The Logos Actions are a perfect example of this. They spent a lot of time showcasing this mechanic and all the different abilities you could unlock and use....however there was not one time in Eureka where I needed to use them in order to progress....the only reason to collect them is so you can unlock enough actions to take your weapon to it's final stage....but yet again it becomes a case of a desirable item being locked behind a grind wall mechanic that doesn't actually serve it's intended purpose....

In Yoshi's statement he tells us that he foresees difficulty keeping up with patch releases and therefore has to cut certain content from being implemented, which in this case are the other genders....okay fine, but if the content schedule is that tight, why waste development resources on a mechanic like Logo Actions, which in themselves are not needed to progress (kill mobs, NM's, level up, or farm crystals) and therefore will seldom be used by the majority of the playerbase....Yet they choose to cut two genders from two playable races....which is content that is guaranteed to always be used and enjoyed by various players for the entire lifetime of this game...that is surely a much better use of development resources compared to content that will most definitely be forgotten next expansion...

I agree I don't think the devs are lazy, they have worked in the industry for years so they obviously understand how the pipeline works....however so do I and something just doesn't make sense with Yoshi's statement...to the point where I suspect it's actually the higher ups in SE management that are to blame for this foolishness...I suspect it is them who are forcing the dev team to stick to this stupid 3.5 month patch release schedule and that's why Yoshi refuses to increase future patch development time.

Demanding unrealistic release windows is extremely common in the games industry right now and it's become a real plague, with the management of these big corporations such as EA forcing unpaid overtime and unrealistic work hours in order to meet an unrealistic release date.....the end result often being a broken, poor excuse of a game (Fallout 76, Anthem and so on) I would not be surprised if SE management is guilty of the same mistreatment and causing the dev team to cut corners with patches....but that's just my speculation based on current AAA development/management trends.

[Senn]

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I already heard your opinion on it, and you disagree. That's fine. We can at least entertain the idea. Let others explain why or why not they would be ok with slower patches.

We could also talk about content we wouldn't mind doing without. Someone said eureka.

[Roda]

On a side note, the dev team managed to make more than 540 head items available for viera and hrothgar. Does anyone have an estimate for how long this took?

To be absolutely fair, glasses are probably the easiest pieces of gear to adjust for new races (well maybe accessories are easier). Very minimal model tweaking and skinning. So we shouldn't use this as a benchmark for how fast they can make other adjustments.

[Senn]

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I can imagine helmets and body gear would take longer.