Male Viera as a playable character! show your support

[Gwenorai]

I would really like to see the math on how 2 years of development of a race can be profitable based purely on sells of a $10 item then all that time and effort could have been directed at the many other items people grab up on the Mogstation and the fact that they give potions out for free.

Hell, if you have played this game long enuff back when the potion was a vet reward any new character you make gets a free potion from start. I can (and will) make an alt right now and prep it for converting into my Raid server Hrothgar and not have to spend a dime on it to race change in ShB.

Depends on how you look at it. You've got folks who will buy the fantasia - but you will also have folks who will end up purchasing more mog items for glamour for their characters. I don't buy some pieces of glamour from the mog station if they don't fit the character's body properly. Beyond this is folks tend to switch back and forth at a whim - that's more than just the one veteran reward. On the outside for the newcomer those who wish to play as male Viera from the start will have to purchase the full package instead of just upgrading from the base game and then starting over - either way, they're buying into the expansion.

The fact the race is actually behind a paywall already in regards to Shadow Bringers is a profit in itself. I know from experience that when I came back after leaving the game after beta - I went and purchased the latest expansion straight away as I liked the idea of the Au'ra at the time. This was the case with some other friends of mine.

Yes, they give you a free fantasia potion but that's it, just one. You also don't get the free potion if you jump skip, and the casual player is more likely to fantasia and then do it again because they slipped up in regards to voice, eye colour and skin tone.

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Two years of development of a race? I don't believe it literally takes them two years. It takes them two years with the current workload they have and juggling everything around. And Viera females were created in a much shorter time frame. They most likely do not have a static team that works justs on armour sets all the time. They have to juggle. So let's not exaggerate and put the idea into folks heads that for two whole years everyone is feverishly working on the race with little time for nothing else. This was probably not your intention anywho, but you know how people are.

Honestly, if you took out all the juggling and what not, the team could probably push out male Viera and female Hrothgar in a month or two - probably in between. Not including quality control. Not that they should do this, but yeah...

For anyone who argues about a time frame; keep in mind that mostly the entire bulk of Mass Effect: Andromeda was created in 18 months. You can't tell me that a company that's much more equipped than an untested Bioware studio can't create models of two missing genders and fit the armour on them in a much shorter time frame. The only defence to this was that Mass Effect: Andromeda was a bit sucky at launch. ¬_¬ For a game that supposedly had 5 years development, the fact the game was mostly built in 18 months is a joke. Grumble grumble.

[reivaxe]

And that's the problem right there: you're assuming that the revenue for mViera/fHrothgar will come solely from the sale of Fantasias. There's PR benefits, subs recovered, new or upgraded subs... all those small things you dismiss over being "not enough" add up. Heck, if they sell 6.0 with the ability to change into either of them I will preorder so fast my card will melt (note: I'd still think that locking the missing genders behind ANOTHER expansion would be sort of a slap in the face but would still do it).

I'll take a Fantasia over an undyable piece of glamour with clipping issues lol

All the things you listed are not givens or actual, tangible direct results of a new race. All of that is covered by adding new Jobs and content every Expansion. That gets people to come back and play the game seeing as if you're not interested in playing the game and dropped it you're prob not gonna come back just to run around with a new race and do nothing you.

Adding a new race is the most expensive cosmetic addition you can bring to games like this which is why, again, this is the last time it's gonna happen according to them ... and it's not even a common occurrence in today's MMOs. Cause it's not a profitable endeavor in and of it self when considering how much time and money goes into it and how much time and work it adds to the development of new content.

Depends on how you look at it. You've got folks who will buy the fantasia - but you will also have folks who will end up purchasing more mog items for glamour for their characters. I don't buy some pieces of glamour from the mog station if they don't fit the character's body properly. Beyond this is folks tend to switch back and forth at a whim - that's more than just the one veteran reward.
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Yes, they give you a free fantasia potion but that's it, just one. You also don't get the free potion if you jump skip, and the casual player is more likely to fantasia and then do it again because they slipped up in regards to voice, eye colour and skin tone.

If you already buy potions on a whim then you're already buying potions, you don't need a new race to convince you to buy one. Same with buying glam. If you buy Glam from the mogstation after you, on a whim, change body types then you are all ready doing everything you seem to credit a new race with causing.

Two years of development of a race? I don't believe it literally takes them two years. It takes them two years with the current workload they have and juggling everything around. And Viera females were created in a much shorter time frame. They most likely do not have a static team that works justs on armour sets all the time. They have to juggle. So let's not exaggerate and put the idea into folks heads that for two whole years everyone is feverishly working on the race with little time for nothing else. This was probably not your intention anywho, but you know how people are.

They have openly said that they started work on the new races shortly after the start of SB and only got them to a presentable state shortly before their reveals. They've even clearly been working on the post reveal given the polish we've seen compared to past renders. So yeah, it takes them a whole expansion to come out.

That's from concept to finished product. These things progress in stages, certain things have to be done first before others can.
They can assign a concept artist to come up with the designs for the race and then once they finish nailing down the art through meetings with the director they move on to something else. Then that art can move on to modeling/ rigging/ textures. Through meeting with the director they come to an agreement on the model ... and there's animation. The animators would need at least a proxy rig of what the race would look like to start animating and once they do it's a process of figuring out how you want them to live and be in this world as well as meeting with the director to get approval (like how Yoshi had to stop the animators working on the Dancer animations because he felt the movements were becoming too gendered/ sexual and at some point they would have to make different animations for the both genders. Animators need guidance and over sight to). Through out this the modelers would have to be going back to fix everything to this body model and people would have to text it so that all the gear works right.

These are all people who could be doing something else at that time and the development of the new race could take that long uninterrupted.

Honestly, if you took out all the juggling and what not, the team could probably push out male Viera and female Hrothgar in a month or two - probably in between. Not including quality control. Not that they should do this, but yeah...

This is such an odd thing to say.

[Gwenorai]

-snip-

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but everything you mentioned that is the most time consuming is literally 'quality control'' and/or 'quality assurance' - and I specifically said, 'Not including quality control.' I should have slapped in QA in there as well to be more clear in my previous post. This is also what Yoshida said the issue was, quality assurances. This isn't to look down at the devs hard work on the models and rigging - but it's a hell of a lot easier to create a model, do the rigging and animations when you don't have to keep going back and forth with the producer and countless of meetings to make sure it's up to his standards. That's the issue, he's admitted to that. It's not cash, it's resources and the fact Yoshida can't be everywhere at once for constant overseeing. He's a hard nut to please. It's why I'm thankful he's finally settled on basic skeleton 'appearance' for male Viera for the concept artists to work from.

Yes, it took them an entire expansion to create a race - yeah, if you're working on it sparingly while doing everything else then yes it's going to take two years. But we need to step away from the imagery that the devs were working feverishly on the race constantly for two years. It's more like this, in the last two years they've been working on patches for Storm Blood which included, savage, trials, dungeons, 24man and etc. While also working on Shadow Bringers which happened to include the race, as well as lore, the world, the story, voice acting, new armours, new designs, new enemies, new environs, music, etc etc etc

Either way, kind of beating a dead horse with a stick. Our little forum dispute means crap all. I ain't in any rush for them to push this out either way.