Male Viera as a playable character! show your support

[Eclesis]

It's not just Fantasia. Graphics and customization can drive user engagement, or why bother adding new races at all? Why not just have everyone play a Hyur? If you're spending weeks, months, years with a character being happy with how it looks is pretty important to a lot of people, and it's a first impression that can get people to look at your game to begin with, particularly if you're offering something different than your competitors. What most people see when they first notice a game isn't a list of specs and mechanics but the advertising splash art.

I started XIV because I'd gotten tired of this exact stereotype - hulking giant musclemen + curvy sexualized women - that pervades fantasy games. I wanted something with aesthetics for male characters like the kMMOs (Aion, for example) but actually a fun game system without horrible grind/RMT/constant PVP focus; if they hadn't added male Mi'qote in 2.0 I wouldn't be here. I run two full characters (Mi'qote and Elezen) because I want to have different looking characters without having to Fantasia all the time, did everything from scratch and never bought a skip potion. That's months and years of replayability. I don't care that much specifically about Viera/Hrothgar, but it they'd released male Viera along the same aesthetics as the females I might've made another alt, since I'm not really interested in any of the other existing options.

Regardless of whether you personally would want to play the race in question, it can prompt someone to check out the game who might previously not have been interested, as I did, or keep them engaged with something new when similar content grind gets stale. Different players value different things, the buT DeVeLopMEnt ReSouRCes zero-sum game is something for the the actual developers to figure out, nobody has to justify "but this will make them drop x" because none of us have any idea how that works internally.

[MrKimper]

Snip

That is true I nearly forgot that devs have access to pre system reqs correct? the issue I believe I have is, I'm not sure when they'd have the time to squeeze this in, we know they begin work on the next expansion around the .1s correct? that means they'd have to be tackling this situation in whatever line of system that they have.

My major point of contention is that, Hrothgar and Viera were apparently being worked on for the entire expansion correct? and were only done for the fanfestivals in feb and march respectively, that means whatever gear outfitting issue they have must have taken them from either the day each of the races were finally finished, OR they were being worked parallel with parts being finished (e.g hrothgar chest being done, then updating the chest piece with all chest gears etc etc). We really don't know how much workflow fixing whatever algorithm/QA problems they have would cut down the work on races. It could be three months it could be two it could be six.

There's just a lot that we still don't know about the work pace or process they do when updating gear besides "Well we have to fit 1000+ gear to these new races" so I agree it's purely speculation at this point which .whatever they'd be released if at all, but I do think if the ps5 is releasing in 2020, and we can expect an upgrade to systems to lineup with that release, whether it's a drastic or not update I couldn't say. That being said I do think if the fix for this "gear" issue can occur mid expansion depending on how much time it shaves off of the process of making the races it isn't too far fetched to look at 6.0 as a earliest possible release date.

I also agree that XIV will start to struggle if it doesn't update it's engine based solely off of innate engine issues, like swimming needing loading zones and ARR zone essentially being un-updatable due to labor constraints. It seems like from the outside looking in the tools they use are in more of a need of an upgrade than anything else. However PC gaming has been on the upswing in japan as of late, and I know what made this game very appealing was that it could run on very very low end specs and still play well, it'll be interesting to see how the change in consumer interest in PC building will change how they go about tackling graphical upgrades.

[Lauront]

That’s a reason they delayed changes to the spec for the time being. Nonetheless, issue is less to do with that as it is the work they say is involved in updating the textures to high res ones. They can ultimately implement improvements to the graphics with optional features over and beyond whatever baseline they move towards, but upgrading the assets will involve a lot of grunt work and is the real impediment for the time being to improving the graphics.

They’ve also said they’re not tying the upgrades to the PS5 as such but the overall direction of technologies, rather than a specific console. Still, it’s not a stretch to say the PS5 will factor into their plans. So I see 6.0 as the make it or break it point for overarching graphics upgrades. If these help ease the addition of the missing genders, so much the better. It’s probably work that would have to occur in parallel. We’ll see if they do it.

[Tizzy_Tormentor]

There was some speculation floating around after the MrHappy interview that, since the dev team expected a negative blowback after the gender-lock reveal, that they may have wanted to make both sets of players happy but may have gotten a big no from SE, or a "you get one last race". So they intended to weaponize player reaction and force SE to allocate them a bigger budget. The wording of "last races" allows them to bring the missing genders later down the line as a "we said last races, and we meant it, so thanks to player demand here's male Viera and female Hrothgar!"

Yoshi playing 5-D chess the entire time.

[reivaxe]

It's yet another thing they can fantasia as. "Fantasia addicts" are proud fans of novelty and pushing the character creator as far as they can. If male viera look good they'd generate a big spike based on novelty, and if they're particularly good-looking, probably boost fantasia sales in general because people wouldn't be able to stop tweaking them. Hell, if I had used my fantasia I would have thrown down the money to fantasia into a male viera that's a tall, lithe, well-proportioned practically normal dude (which we don't have currently) and I'm sure I'm not the only one. This doesn't even touch on the people that might buy and sub to the game because of them--hell, I picked FFXIV not because it was from SE but because it had the most okay looking characters. Many people put a lot of weight on how they present themselves in MMOs and will pay money to make sure their character is perfect--even if that means throwing down a fantasia JUST to change their eye color or ear type.

Again, you're not following the train of thought you present with the topic of "Fantasia addicts".
Ok, so lets pretend to be a "Fantasia addict" who buys a potion to change every week.
New race comes out ... what do we do?

A- Use my 1 potion a week on jumping into a new race and buy potions as often as I normally would
B- Buy TWICE as many potions for now on cause now I wanna change every 3 days instead of every 7

Why would you do B? What would prompt you to now buy more potions more often when you already buy WAY more than normal? You can tweak and twerk all day in the Benchmark or through making an alt for much of the broad information about how things look in game and things become pretty clear with a lil leg work. No reason to up your "Fantasia addiction" for a new race. If you're already changing appearances often you're just gonna keep doing that but with more choices each time.

As for new subs there's no way to tell how many people would buy the game and pay the sub just for a race. That seems like it would be an very rare answer for why you picked up a MMO. Again, if this were purely profitable then why would a company with far more incentive to make a profit than you look at the numbers and say "nope, no more races after this. Can't handle it"? Why do other successful MMOs not add them?

Cause the pay off for that effort isn't worth the work it requires. So for us to get what we're getting is truly a gift and labor of love to expand the ways players can express themselves.

[zeylos]

I'm honestly quite surprised that some ppl are now giving the idea that hey would only make NPCs of the missing genders, and I think it's quite obvious that wouldn't be the case, and that once we see a male Viera or fem hrotgar npc we can pretty much confirm they are coming.
This is based on how Yoshida said that one of the main reasons they went for female Viera instead of female hrotgar was because they knew they couldn't add a Viera npc and not add the race because the red be outrage from players saying: but you have it right here!

[zeylos]

Again, you're not following the train of thought you present with the topic of "Fantasia addicts".
Ok, so lets pretend to be a "Fantasia addict" who buys a potion to change every week.
New race comes out ... what do we do?

A- Use my 1 potion a week on jumping into a new race and buy potions as often as I normally would
B- Buy TWICE as many potions for now on cause now I wanna change every 3 days instead of every 7

Why would you do B? What would prompt you to now buy more potions more often when you already buy WAY more than normal? You can tweak and twerk all day in the Benchmark or through making an alt for much of the broad information about how things look in game and things become pretty clear with a lil leg work. No reason to up your "Fantasia addiction" for a new race. If you're already changing appearances often you're just gonna keep doing that but with more choices each time.

As for new subs there's no way to tell how many people would buy the game and pay the sub just for a race. That seems like it would be an very rare answer for why you picked up a MMO. Again, if this were purely profitable then why would a company with far more incentive to make a profit than you look at the numbers and say "nope, no more races after this. Can't handle it"? Why do other successful MMOs not add them?

Cause the pay off for that effort isn't worth the work it requires. So for us to get what we're getting is truly a gift and labor of love to expand the ways players can express themselves.

You think they decided to add female Viera instead of female hrotgar for any other reason that benefits? If they didn't care about benefits they would've gone for what they wanted and given us full hrotgar

[Duskane]

its true if they didn't want to make some cash of these new races they would have included a fantasia with ShB

[WhiteArchmage]

Again, you're not following the train of thought you present with the topic of "Fantasia addicts".
Ok, so lets pretend to be a "Fantasia addict" who buys a potion to change every week.
New race comes out ... what do we do?

A- Use my 1 potion a week on jumping into a new race and buy potions as often as I normally would
B- Buy TWICE as many potions for now on cause now I wanna change every 3 days instead of every 7

Why would you do B? What would prompt you to now buy more potions more often when you already buy WAY more than normal? You can tweak and twerk all day in the Benchmark or through making an alt for much of the broad information about how things look in game and things become pretty clear with a lil leg work. No reason to up your "Fantasia addiction" for a new race. If you're already changing appearances often you're just gonna keep doing that but with more choices each time.

As for new subs there's no way to tell how many people would buy the game and pay the sub just for a race. That seems like it would be an very rare answer for why you picked up a MMO. Again, if this were purely profitable then why would a company with far more incentive to make a profit than you look at the numbers and say "nope, no more races after this. Can't handle it"? Why do other successful MMOs not add them?

Cause the pay off for that effort isn't worth the work it requires. So for us to get what we're getting is truly a gift and labor of love to expand the ways players can express themselves.

Your argument defeats itself with the Live Letter reason for Hrothgar, though, since Yoshi-P even stated they don't know how much they will be played but they wanted to make them because the player demand was there. A lesser player demand than the one we have now (in amount of people making noise for the missing genders). But that's one of those pesky things called facts that don't fit your narrative (seeing the Forum reaction, they may displace a lot of Roes and a small percentage of the other races, but there's no crystal ball to say how many will stay Hroth, add it to their regular Fantasia rotation, or try and drop. There's no crystal ball to say how many will change and stay Viera, for that matter).

Not to mention it doesn't have to be "Fantasia addicts," I myself expressed that the plan was to switch between male and female Viera every other month, and at least another poster expressed the same. How many non-binary players (or simply players that enjoy a change of look every once in a while) but don't post in the forums do you think there are? Or the average player that messes around in the benchmark and thinks "Oh, this race/gender looks cool...but I don't wanna make an alt...I could change to this" Reducing it to the hyperbolic "no one will play this/oh, just Fantasia addicts" is missing a whole bunch of middle ground.

Plus it'd help them on the PR side: "SE listens to players!" "SE believes in gender equality! Says Gender-exclusive races are thing of the past!" "Male Viera revealed for the first time in FF game!"

No, we have no way of knowing how many subs will be crated/upgraded/retaken, but when you add possible new subs or upgraded subs with all the other reasons it, well, adds up.

[zeylos]

Your argument defeats itself with the Live Letter reason for Hrothgar, though, since Yoshi-P even stated they don't know how much they will be played but they wanted to make them because the player demand was there. A lesser player demand than the one we have now (in amount of people making noise for the missing genders). But that's one of those pesky things called facts that don't fit your narrative (seeing the Forum reaction, they may displace a lot of Roes and a small percentage of the other races, but there's no crystal ball to say how many will stay Hroth, add it to their regular Fantasia rotation, or try and drop. There's no crystal ball to say how many will change and stay Viera, for that matter).

Not to mention it doesn't have to be "Fantasia addicts," I myself expressed that the plan was to switch between male and female Viera every other month, and at least another poster expressed the same. How many non-binary players (or simply players that enjoy a change of look every once in a while) but don't post in the forums do you think there are? Or the average player that messes around in the benchmark and thinks "Oh, this race/gender looks cool...but I don't wanna make an alt...I could change to this" Reducing it to the hyperbolic "no one will play this/oh, just Fantasia addicts" is missing a whole bunch of middle ground.

Plus it'd help them on the PR side: "SE listens to players!" "SE believes in gender equality! Says Gender-exclusive races are thing of the past!" "Male Viera revealed for the first time in FF game!"

No, we have no way of knowing how many subs will be crated/upgraded/retaken, but when you add possible new subs or upgraded subs with all the other reasons it, well, adds up.

Not only is here more ppl that ant the missing genders than those who wanted both Viera and a beast race combined, but I have been playing since the start and have NEVER seen anything get as much attention, and even less for such a long period of time. Any single post they do on which ever social media they want has about 70% of its comments being male Viera related, and that's never been seen with practically anything