Yoshida Addressing “Butt/Hip Sliders” and The Solution To Them:

[ElciaDeiLinus]

It's a pretty old engine they're using, and the obsession with bulges, butts and overall customization wasn't at this peak in mmos at the time FFXIV came out because it generally wasn't something that could be done particularly well. Few mmos of the time had body customization, it's a flaw but of all things I'd imagine making a change like this would also force them to rework how all their gear works in that region.

IMO this should be a lesson learned- I think when they make the next FF mmo they should take a look at the level of body customization you can put into BDO. Either that or consider doing what WoW did when they fully redesigned all their models. If there's a game worthy of a graphical redesign that'd have the longevity to make it worthwhile I think it'd be FFXIV, and including butt/dong sliders could be part of it- personally I'd prefer more options in everything; thighs, waist, arms, etc... if possible. I just doubt we'll see it during FFXIV, as the only game I've seen do an overhaul (and even that was a fairly minor one- smoothed out the character frames, resized some things and smoothed them out) was WoW, and it took them multiple xpacs to finish all the races so it clearly isn't an easy undertaking.

I imagine it'd be very costly to do something like this, and probably worth it most only if they planned to do a full overhaul while they were at it. Would be nice, but unexpected. Building specific pieces with different sizes is prob the most reliable thing they can do.

[Amnmaat]

That Gamespot interview was hilarious
Yoshida is saying: Stop playing with i5 4th/5th generation CPUs and upgrade your weak ass CPUs to at least 7th generation or higher. And don't get me started on people still using 900 series Nvidia cards (and whatever the equivalent is for AMD).
And at the end he tells us to bring more people into the game to keep the game running for many decades; well I'd bring in more people if we get male Viera.

[MsQi]

It's a pretty old engine they're using, and the obsession with bulges, butts and overall customization wasn't at this peak in mmos at the time FFXIV came out because it generally wasn't something that could be done particularly well. Few mmos of the time had body customization, it's a flaw but of all things I'd imagine making a change like this would also force them to rework how all their gear works in that region.

I think it may have a lot to do with the fact that WoW was still king, and since it had such limited options there wasn't much driving them to do better. However I think almost every mmo since WoW, and even some before, had way more advanced character creation. Even LOTRO had a body type slider. By the time of the initial release there was Aion, STO, COX, Champions Online. From what I've seen ARR has a lot more options than 1.0, so they were probably looking at games besides WoW but still had to work within certain limitations.

[MariaArvana]

I don't know about Minfillia's dress, but a large portion of chest gear in the game does in fact change with bust size. I've checked. And I think you are missing the point. He is saying that if butt size were an option they would be obligated to make sure that gear reflected that as well.

I was addressing their point on getting annoyed at why Yoshi-P words things the way he does in interviews, by showcasing how much of a complicated topic it is in comparison and why devs naturally choose much more simpler answers in lieu of writing essays on why things can't be done. Also yes, I even dumbed down my explanation since I didn't want to write an entire essay on every single intricacy of how their 3D model system works; modders have long since well documents every one of the intricacies.

Yes, some pieces do get affected, but it depends on their classifcation by the game's code. Some pieces outright ignore your choice in preference or make it non-existant; take a look at literally any single piece of actual metal armor in the game, a good 80% of them don't possess breastbones in the 3D model for the slider to modify. Others also make you super sized regardless of your choice on the 0-100 scale like Minfillia's, and to a very lesser extent, the BRD AF1 top where the base shape is naturally modeled larger, meaning a 0 on them is still greater than a >50 on others. But that's also besides the point, since a butt slider is basically impossible to implement without overhauling all the armor in the game to include butt bones.

But even then, that may not satisfy people, as all a butt slider would do is keep the same shape, but extend it outward a bit (and in many cases, do nothing, like the armor on chest interaction). They'd literally have to re-tool and re-mesh every single piece of bottoms in the game if they wanted any of it to fit a different butt shape like some people want, like the 2B's shape. Mods showcase this extremely well.

[Amnmaat]

I was addressing their point on getting annoyed at why Yoshi-P words things the way he does in interviews, by showcasing how much of a complicated topic it is in comparison and why devs naturally choose much more simpler answers in lieu of writing essays on why things can't be done. Also yes, I even dumbed down my explanation since I didn't want to write an entire essay on every single intricacy of how their 3D model system works; modders have long since well documents every one of the intricacies.

Yes, some pieces do get affected, but it depends on their classifcation by the game's code. Some pieces outright ignore your choice in preference or make it non-existant; take a look at literally any single piece of actual metal armor in the game, a good 80% of them don't possess breastbones in the 3D model for the slider to modify. Others also make you super sized regardless of your choice on the 0-100 scale like Minfillia's, and to a very lesser extent, the BRD AF1 top where the base shape is naturally modeled larger, meaning a 0 on them is still greater than a >50 on others. But that's also besides the point, since a butt slider is basically impossible to implement without overhauling all the armor in the game to include butt bones.

But even then, that may not satisfy people, as all a butt slider would do is keep the same shape, but extend it outward a bit (and in many cases, do nothing, like the armor on chest interaction). They'd literally have to re-tool and re-mesh every single piece of bottoms in the game if they wanted any of it to fit a different butt shape like some people want, like the 2B's shape. Mods showcase this extremely well.

Yeah, that's what many people don't realize, if they do add a butt slider, they better get ready for calls to remake the bust slider; as it doesn't affect your bust size. All the busts are the same size no matter what you chose in the character creator, except for 2 pieces (starter gear and underwear shirt). What they would have to do is to retool the way the servers databases store female tops (and bottoms) so they take into account the slider definitions which you set in the character creator when you first made your character. Basically the reason why it works on the starter gear is because the gear is separated by race; thus taking account the bust slider.

The server database doesn't request that data when it's not race specific. I'm not sure if the solution is just to turn on a switch to request the slider data, but like I said, if they add this switch for all bottom gear people will want them to do the same for busts.

[MsQi]

I was addressing their point on getting annoyed at why Yoshi-P words things the way he does in interviews, by showcasing how much of a complicated topic it is in comparison and why devs naturally choose much more simpler answers in lieu of writing essays on why things can't be done. Also yes, I even dumbed down my explanation since I didn't want to write an entire essay on every single intricacy of how their 3D model system works; modders have long since well documents every one of the intricacies.

Yes, some pieces do get affected, but it depends on their classifcation by the game's code. Some pieces outright ignore your choice in preference or make it non-existant; take a look at literally any single piece of actual metal armor in the game, a good 80% of them don't possess breastbones in the 3D model for the slider to modify. Others also make you super sized regardless of your choice on the 0-100 scale like Minfillia's, and to a very lesser extent, the BRD AF1 top where the base shape is naturally modeled larger, meaning a 0 on them is still greater than a >50 on others. But that's also besides the point, since a butt slider is basically impossible to implement without overhauling all the armor in the game to include butt bones.

But even then, that may not satisfy people, as all a butt slider would do is keep the same shape, but extend it outward a bit (and in many cases, do nothing, like the armor on chest interaction). They'd literally have to re-tool and re-mesh every single piece of bottoms in the game if they wanted any of it to fit a different butt shape like some people want, like the 2B's shape. Mods showcase this extremely well.

No he didn't use technobabble but he addressed the issue head on, saying, like you did, they would have to remake all the equipment.

He's a liar - talking about changes necessitating alterations in character movements. People have been modding characters into downright enormous sizes in games like Skyrim for going on two decades now without changing anything but the mesh (no skeleton tweaks; no animation reworks). And I'm not arguing that SE should add some ludicrous slider that allows people to make huge characters - but the idea that they'd have to edit character animations because our little catgirls gained 15-20 pounds is RIDICULOUS. That simply isn't logical.

He did not say it was necessary. He's making a statement about his team's attention to detail.

[Haruka_R]

I am convinced this game will not be getting a character creator revamp. It just won't.

[Roda]

Because PR exists.

The reasons they give aren't anywhere close to the reason why they can't implement a butt slider, but its a plausible, easy to understand response to anyone who has zero idea on how the backends of 3D modeling and their gear system works, and it makes for much more interesting interview questions than 5 minutes of explaining technical nitty-gritty. Yoshi-P could talk about the exact issues of why a butt slider would be pointless, but half the technical terms he would use would fly over people's heads. Hence why they use generic, vague statements like 'server limitations', talk about worst case scenarios to dissuage the public on it, or simply crack jokes when asked about it.
[snip].

It's not that he says "no we can't do that" or "it's very difficult in our systems to do that, and we've got higher priority things to work on", it's that he immediately goes for some rediculous answer like "we can't have IK because then we have to make the servers suck" or "we can't have more long hair, ps5 limiations pls understand" or "we can't have a butt slider because then we'd have to apply intensive cloth simulation to everything" that irks the crap out of me. Like there are solutions less rediculous than those things, and he often times gets to them after talking it through a bit, they may not be high enough priority to render a "yes" but representing those requests with such outlandish solutions makes the requests look comical.

I know he's probably iteratting on any kind of solution out loud starting from [thing that will create flawless result to the letter of the request] -(troubleshoot problems with [thing])-> [fudge the system a bit to fake a solution that looks close enough to the request] -(calculate the time and effort required to put solution in place)-> [???]. But it just drives me up a wall (especially when people take his first pie-in-the-sky approach and run with it). @@

(and the cracking jokes about player questions is not a good look and gives the impression that SE doesn't really care about player concerns)

[MikkoAkure]

It's not that he says "no we can't do that" or "it's very difficult in our systems to do that, and we've got higher priority things to work on", it's that he immediately goes for some rediculous answer like "we can't have IK because then we have to make the servers suck" or "we can't have more long hair, ps5 limiations pls understand" or "we can't have a butt slider because then we'd have to apply intensive cloth simulation to everything" that irks the crap out of me. Like there are solutions less rediculous than those things, and he often times gets to them after talking it through a bit, they may not be high enough priority to render a "yes" but representing those requests with such outlandish solutions makes the requests look comical.

I know he's probably iteratting on any kind of solution out loud starting from [thing that will create flawless result to the letter of the request] -(troubleshoot problems with [thing])-> [fudge the system a bit to fake a solution that looks close enough to the request] -(calculate the time and effort required to put solution in place)-> [???]. But it just drives me up a wall (especially when people take his first pie-in-the-sky approach and run with it). @@

(and the cracking jokes about player questions is not a good look and gives the impression that SE doesn't really care about player concerns)

Or he sounds like someone who has been constantly asked similar questions about a limited character creator and game engine that he had nothing to do with and was forced to inherit from the previous development team to save costs. Barring SE putting all the money they're making from the game, back into the game, we're not going to see a game engine upgrade or added creation options. The reason he went for that answer is because it's the truth. The game is built on spaghetti code that was outdated by the time 1.0 came out and SE probably forced the current team to use it to save a buck on a gamble. Because of that, they have to balance how many characters they have on the screen with the amount of character creation options and other really stupid stuff.

[ItMe]

Or he sounds like someone who has been constantly asked similar questions about a limited character creator and game engine that he had nothing to do with and was forced to inherit from the previous development team to save costs. Barring SE putting all the money they're making from the game, back into the game, we're not going to see a game engine upgrade or added creation options. The reason he went for that answer is because it's the truth. The game is built on spaghetti code that was outdated by the time 1.0 came out and SE probably forced the current team to use it to save a buck on a gamble. Because of that, they have to balance how many characters they have on the screen with the amount of character creation options and other really stupid stuff.

Good point.
I feel like people tend to forget this.