Letter from the Producer LXII

[reivaxe]

I think you are missing his point. Try thinking of it this way, lets say you go out to eat, you're a very picky eater by the way, but you go out and only have a choice between a chicken or pork dish. You are told or its hinted to you by advertisements that you can get either fried or grilled/roasted. Perfect you like both chicken and pork, but think grilled chicken is too dry and fried pork too oily, so you can just choose from the other two options. However, once you get to the restaurant you find out that they only fry their pork and grill their chicken, which baffles you because how hard could it be to do, the other method. You get told "reasons" that admittedly make sense, but ultimately if this restaurant doesn't have any options for you you're probably going to find someplace else to eat. Granted this is a bit of an oversimplification but does present a similar expectation and dilemma. The two meat options are nice, but it's better to have the one option cooked two ways over the two options cooked only one way. It's this wierd dynamic where by limiting the options, you're creating a wider variety of options.

Your example is terrible :/

Let me try to move it around ...

You're already at a joint, you enjoy it! It's got beer and whine and food and games and TV screens to watch the game on and even a karaoke stage! It's basically David Busters or Chucky Cheese. You get your favorite dish all the time (Potatoes I guess) and enjoy all the things you can do there. Now, they offer you 2 NEW dishes ... one's Shrimp and the other some kinda bird. You never came here before for shrimp because it was never offered and you don't eat that kinda bird ... you also enjoy your favorite dish and other activities here or else you would have stopped coming by now. They never promised you a shrimp dish before and when they showed the shrimp in an ad it was only shown cooked 1 way (Fried breaded shrimp). But now you're thinking of going someplace else because they don't make shrimp burgers?

Yeah, this is nonsense.

[Insertcoins]

Your example is terrible :/

Let me try to move it around ...

You're already at a joint, you enjoy it! It's got beer and whine and food and games and TV screens to watch the game on and even a karaoke stage! It's basically David Busters or Chucky Cheese. You get your favorite dish all the time (Potatoes I guess) and enjoy all the things you can do there. Now, they offer you 2 NEW dishes ... one's Shrimp and the other some kinda bird. You never came here before for shrimp because it was never offered and you don't eat that kinda bird ... you also enjoy your favorite dish and other activities here or else you would have stopped coming by now. They never promised you a shrimp dish before and when they showed the shrimp in an ad it was only shown cooked 1 way (Fried breaded shrimp). But now you're thinking of going someplace else because they don't make shrimp burgers?

Yeah, this is nonsense.

Dav and busters? Do you live in Chicago too? And I always thoguht it was dav and busters... the more you learn....

MASSIVE EDIT. Ok.. I thought Dave and busters was only a chicago thing. MY BAD. Crap thats 2 mess ups in one day. TT.TT I'mma go cry in a corner now.

[reivaxe]

Dav and busters? Do you live in Chicago too? And I always thoguht it was dav and busters... the more you learn....

I mean't Dave & Busters lol, and yeah, I'm from Chicago

Only problem with that is that before, we knew about Viera for quite a long time. We didn't know about Hrothgar. The expectation, then, was that there weren't going to be any beasts, and I'd say reasonably, people expected to be able to make a male Viera.

Now we're in a situation where people want male Viera, and on top of that, people want something they didn't know they wanted: female Hrothgar. So the amount of people left wanting is more than if they had just given us Viera.

There wasn't a "long time", it was a difference of 2 months. Before Hrothgar were revealed they were leaked, first by Blu Fever and then other leakers and finally by the French dub of the game in Feb. These are well known things among people who bother talking about this game online.

And no, just Viera would have let down all those people who wanted a beast race seeing as these are the final additions and they would be using said final addition to add "human, but with bunny ears!" which is far less creative and unique compared to the Scaley Peeps who ALSO got flack at first for being too human but are far more removed from human than Viera.

According to what I saw in support thread, most of active people there were okay with his "slim, handsome, elegant, more like Elezen with Miqo'te face" description ("more like Elezen" doesn't mean copy, I suppose he just wanted to give an idea. And since females seems to be mix of Hyur and Elezens, males could be similar to them). There were also people who wanted to see them shorter than females (which doesn't really mean that they have to look like children. Females are quite tall). And ofc there are people who wants to see another bulky race or wanted to see child model, but I doubt that they are even 1/3 of those who askes for males at all (can't say for sure, since I'm not telepath, and a lot of people don't write anything in threads or do not specify how they want to see them).

Thing is that the Male Viera thread is mostly spam posted on by a hand full of like <10 people, so if those <10 people are cool with an idea it's gonna look popular.

I've seen the drama from the faction fighting on the topic of "which head canon male Viera should get in" spread not just out of that thread but also outta this forum when people started making topics on reddit to gather recruits to bring back here and join the fight. Doesn't happen anymore because the people of reddit down vote the topic of male viera to the pits of hell ... cause the amount of people who want them isn't nearly as big as this forum would lead you to believe.

In truth there's never been a depiction of a Male Viera in a game so there's no centralized, agreed upon idea of what they would look like. So yeah, everyone who wants them can have their own idea they're fighting for and have no clue what the end result would be.

[Insertcoins]

I mean't Dave & Busters lol, and yeah, I'm from Chicago



There wasn't a "long time", it was a difference of 2 months. Before Hrothgar were revealed they were leaked, first by Blu Fever and then other leakers and finally by the French dub of the game in Feb. These are well known things among people who bother talking about this game online.

And no, just Viera would have let down all those people who wanted a beast race seeing as these are the final additions and they would be using said final addition to add "human, but with bunny ears!" which is far less creative and unique compared to the Scaley Peeps who ALSO got flack at first for being too human but are far more removed from human than Viera.

CHICAGO UNITE!!!!! - UP TOP-

[MomomiMomi]

There wasn't a "long time", it was a difference of 2 months. Before Hrothgar were revealed they were leaked, first by Blu Fever and then other leakers and finally by the French dub of the game in Feb. These are well known things among people who bother talking about this game online.

First of all, a leak isn't something you can know. It's only something you can believe. And second, the amount of people who it was "well known" among is a tiny fraction of even the forums, which is a tiny fraction of the playerbase.

And no, just Viera would have let down all those people who wanted a beast race seeing as these are the final additions and they would be using said final addition to add "human, but with bunny ears!" which is far less creative and unique compared to the Scaley Peeps who ALSO got flack at first for being too human but are far more removed from human than Viera.

"All those people who wanted a beast race" weren't all that many people. Even most people who actually want a beast race recognize that it's not a popular thing. But not only did they upset all the people who wanted male Viera, now there are people who didn't know they wanted a beast race who want female Hrothgar now that they've seen it. Thus, the amount of people who want a (female) beast race has increased. So, yes, I believe they have upset more people than if they had only had Viera with both races.

[Physic]

First of all, a leak isn't something you can know. It's only something you can believe. And second, the amount of people who it was "well known" among is a tiny fraction of even the forums, which is a tiny fraction of the playerbase.



"All those people who wanted a beast race" weren't all that many people. Even most people who actually want a beast race recognize that it's not a popular thing. But not only did they upset all the people who wanted male Viera, now there are people who didn't know they wanted a beast race who want female Hrothgar now that they've seen it. Thus, the amount of people who want a (female) beast race has increased. So, yes, I believe they have upset more people than if they had only had Viera with both races.

the initial plan was hrothgar only. so would people who like fran have been happy with that?

[reivaxe]

First of all, a leak isn't something you can know. It's only something you can believe. And second, the amount of people who it was "well known" among is a tiny fraction of even the forums, which is a tiny fraction of the playerbase.

I'm not even limiting it to this forum, I'm saying "people who bother to talk about this game online".

First a leaker who got everything right says Viera are coming ... then says not just Viera but a 2nd new race are a coming (strongly hints at the 2nd being lion/ ronso like). This happens months before Viera are revealed by SE and it spread across the webs like fire. People already start talking about "gender lock" because how else are we getting 2 new races?

Sure, you could simply "believe" at that point or not. But then 10 days after the Viera reveal Hrothgar are leaked in the French Dub, right with Viera. How did I personally find out about this? In a discord ... for Eureka. It pops up on reddit and makes it's way here with a 14 page thread that split off from a gender lock thread because to many people it was clear from the Viera reveal that males were not coming.

So yeah, if you're on this forum actively you would have known about Hrothgar shortly after Viera as that was a legit in game screw up that came to light.

"All those people who wanted a beast race" weren't all that many people. .

Uhhh, no.
I am someone who has been screaming for Viera for as long as I've been playing this game. The ONLY request I've seen that isn't Viera and is close to as requested as Viera are "beastly races". Lupin, Ronso, Burmecian and so on. And I as well as many other Viera fans would shut them down because no way SE would make a beastly race. Many people wanted it but thought it was unlikely to happen because of the nature of this game's aesthetics.

And your logic makes no sense ... people didn't want a beast race but NOW want a beast race female? Wut?

[MomomiMomi]

And your logic makes no sense ... people didn't want a beast race but NOW want a beast race female? Wut?

It makes perfect sense. The same way people didn't know they wanted a smartphone until it existed, and now over 90% of the population has one.

A lot of people don't know that they want something until they see an example of it.

[MomomiMomi]

Doesn't happen anymore because the people of reddit down vote the topic of male viera to the pits of hell ... cause the amount of people who want them isn't nearly as big as this forum would lead you to believe.

Yeah I guess those 1665 likes are just from dummy accounts or something. I'm pretty sure that's a forum record, by the way.

And just for comparison, the amount of people who liked the thread for getting Viera at all (not female Viera, just Viera) was 403. 4x as many people want male Viera as people who wanted Viera. It's a paradox!

Sorry to disappoint you, but there were just as many people clamoring for a beast race as there were for Viera (which can be observed in past FF14 related social media). In fact, before they teased Viera at the Fan Festival, there were far MORE people wanting a beast race than Viera.

The official poll for a new race disagrees.

[Kaedan]

The official poll for a new race disagrees.

LOL You're not serious, right?

Despite the fact the poll is invalid due to it's self-selection bias, the poll does not specify Viera. It only give Viera as an example of "mammalian demi-beastmen").

The far more accurate metric is the aggregation of social media. Far better than a self-select poll which literally has no statistical value.

EDIT: Just for reference for you in the future, no forum poll in the history of forum polls has ever been statistically valid. They would have to randomly sample the playerbase through email to get a valid statistical sample.