Male Viera as a playable character! show your support

[Theodric]

I agree but I think the issue holding back FFXIV isn't money. It's partially resources and mostly the spaghetti code they made to get ARR out the door. It functions but boy howdy they did not future proof it. Should they find a way of fixing the engine so it can actually support customization, gear and expanding inventories? Yes. Absolutely. IDK if they'll do it, though.

It shouldn't be impossible.

A lot of work, certainly - but the longer they leave it, the more work there is to be done. If they're serious about the game lasting a long time and not just ending with 6.0 or 7.0 then it'll inevitably need additional polish. WoW is an older game but has taken the time to upgrade character customisation not once but twice.

[SturmChurro]

Don't misunderstand. Hrothgar being so limited was a design choice. This is the route they chose to achieve "beast heads". Hairstyles locked to these heads, and no way to change the single hairstyle per head without a fantasia was intentional. They could add viera hairs, but they have said they want them to be racially unique. On top of this, I think they are coupling viera/hrothgar as a single race, meaning updates for one won't happen without updates for the other.

Personally, I do not think the "spaghetti code" or whatever excuse really applies here, I think they simply rushed these races (specifically hrothgar) for Shadowbringers launch, and doubled down. Viera actually uses the female midlander body, so I doubt they have many issues fitting gear to their body. They chose to release female viera/male hrothgar, knowing their workload. There should be no excuse for leaving players who have paid money to switch to these races with NO updates, but rather the promise of updates.

As for male viera, rather for any other new races, fitting gear would simply slow their patch schedule. Though, Yoshida has called them weird, if I remember correctly. Female viera was always intended, not really male viera.

[Veliaire]

The money brought in by FFXIV doesn't stay to fund just the game, though. The executives only give XIV just enough budget to continue running, and nothing more. This is, in part, why we keep hearing about how the developers are implementing additions to the game "on their own time"

No one was paid for the addition of flying to the ARR zones, no one was paid to model and develop what limited headgear viera and hrothgar currently can wear. There are other titles in development or that didn't make back their development costs, and the cash cow that is FFXIV goes to supporting those other titles. So until the people who hold the purse strings at Square decide to give Yoshi more money, he is limited as far as how many people he can hire to do this development, especially when you consider that adding new races is an ongoing expense since every new piece of gear has to be modeled to fit and tested with every battle action and every emote to make sure the character model doesn't clip through the clothing item.

I still want to see the races completed. But we do have to remember that they don't have all the financial resources brought in by the game at their disposal, only whatever allowance they're given by those higher up.

The money is coming in. That they CHOOSE not to use it to enhance the game that made it is NOT an excuse.

[SturmChurro]

The money is coming in. That they CHOOSE not to use it to enhance the game that made it is NOT an excuse.

The biggest thing is "slow their patch schedule". Someone will come in here and say, "well, they have said just hiring more developers won't work. They need to hire and train them." They can actually add a lot of the things players want, they just won't commit the time or resources to doing it. Rather, SE seems to siphon resources out of this game to fund failed project after failed project.

[FoxyAreku]

Don't misunderstand. Hrothgar being so limited was a design choice. This is the route they chose to achieve "beast heads". Hairstyles locked to these heads, and no way to change the single hairstyle per head without a fantasia was intentional. They could add viera hairs, but they have said they want them to be racially unique. On top of this, I think they are coupling viera/hrothgar as a single race, meaning updates for one won't happen without updates for the other.

Personally, I do not think the "spaghetti code" or whatever excuse really applies here, I think they simply rushed these races (specifically hrothgar) for Shadowbringers launch, and doubled down. Viera actually uses the female midlander body, so I doubt they have many issues fitting gear to their body. They chose to release female viera/male hrothgar, knowing their workload. There should be no excuse for leaving players who have paid money to switch to these races with NO updates, but rather the promise of updates.

As for male viera, rather for any other new races, fitting gear would simply slow their patch schedule. Though, Yoshida has called them weird, if I remember correctly. Female viera was always intended, not really male viera.

It being intentional just means they were intentionally lazy. There's actually no excuse, especially since mods exist to separate hair from the head and apply headgear. It's mind-blowing to me that *Modders* have figured this out before them.

[SturmChurro]

It being intentional just means they were intentionally lazy. There's actually no excuse, especially since mods exist to separate hair from the head and apply headgear. It's mind-blowing to me that *Modders* have figured this out before them.

That's one way of wording what I said. However, this community doesn't like it when the "lazy" term is thrown around. I don't doubt we will get somebody bringing up "Covid" as the excuse for the lack of updates to hrothgar/viera even though it has been going on a year and a half since their release. Excusing the fact that they have released a multitude of other stupid little things like hairs (viera/hrothgar cannot use), umbrellas, wings, etc. By the way people, before Covid it was at like 7 months since the release of viera/hrothgar.

[Ayuhra]

That's one way of wording what I said. However, this community doesn't like it when the "lazy" term is thrown around. I don't doubt we will get somebody bringing up "Covid" as the excuse for the lack of updates to hrothgar/viera even though it has been going on a year and a half since their release. Excusing the fact that they have released a multitude of other stupid little things like hairs (viera/hrothgar cannot use), umbrellas, wings, etc. By the way people, before Covid it was at like 7 months since the release of viera/hrothgar.

I don't think it's laziness.

Onboarding new people is very time consuming and difficult. Note WoW was onboarding new staff around the time Warlords went into active development. The toll on the game was noticeable.

Of course if a company is set up to run with efficiency onboarding staff is part of the pipeline. No team at SE seems to be efficient so there is a top down issue there. Sure would like to see that change...

[wereotter]

The money is coming in. That they CHOOSE not to use it to enhance the game that made it is NOT an excuse.

This is basic corporate finance. If you can get the same return on a product by spending less money on it, why would you ever spend more? Not to mention that new projects always need up front capital in order to just get off the ground. Every game that Square makes, XIV included, needed to get funds from the profits of games previously made, or from subscriptions being paid, in order to pay the staff making the game.

There's certainly a team that looks at the potential return on investment and decides that more races doesn't equate to higher profits after a certain point, and so requests for additional funds to enable the creation of those races will be denied because they're simply not profitable. Yoshida and his team don't get the money then hand over what they're not using. They're allocated a budget by people above them and have to work within it.

If anything you can say that they CHOSE to use the money that XIV was making to fund the development of the 7 remake, and XV. Yes those games ended up turning a profit post release, but the entire time they're in development, they were losing the company money on staff salaries, and that money had to come from somewhere else.

[Vahlnir]

This is basic corporate finance. If you can get the same return on a product by spending less money on it, why would you ever spend more? Not to mention that new projects always need up front capital in order to just get off the ground. Every game that Square makes, XIV included, needed to get funds from the profits of games previously made, or from subscriptions being paid, in order to pay the staff making the game.

There's certainly a team that looks at the potential return on investment and decides that more races doesn't equate to higher profits after a certain point, and so requests for additional funds to enable the creation of those races will be denied because they're simply not profitable. Yoshida and his team don't get the money then hand over what they're not using. They're allocated a budget by people above them and have to work within it.

If anything you can say that they CHOSE to use the money that XIV was making to fund the development of the 7 remake, and XV. Yes those games ended up turning a profit post release, but the entire time they're in development, they were losing the company money on staff salaries, and that money had to come from somewhere else.

One thing I've noticed with Shadowbringers is that they are putting in a good bit of effort to produce the content they are putting out, but not always in the places the game needs. They've been doing that for years, but it seems much more prevelant now. Like, did we really need a full ensemble for Perform? Probably not. Did we need some stickers for Gpose? Again, probably not. I get that for some these things were everything, but...there were other areas of the game that needed, and still need, to be addressed. But yay for Gpose options I guess! They seem fine to ignore the fact that Viera and Hrothgar are in a pretty poor state, or that they still have a content longevity issue as a couple examples. The list could go on, mostly because they have let it get longer than it needed to be. Shadowbringers has excelled in a few ways, probably more than any expansion before it, but it is also failing in just as many of them.

[Theodric]

One thing I've noticed with Shadowbringers is that they are putting in a good bit of effort to produce the content they are putting out, but not always in the places the game needs. They've been doing that for years, but it seems much more prevelant now. Like, did we really need a full ensemble for Perform? Probably not. Did we need some stickers for Gpose? Again, probably not. I get that for some these things were everything, but...there were other areas of the game that needed, and still need, to be addressed. But yay for Gpose options I guess! They seem fine to ignore the fact that Viera and Hrothgar are in a pretty poor state, or that they still have a content longevity issue as a couple examples. The list could go on, mostly because they have let it get longer than it needed to be. Shadowbringers has excelled in a few ways, probably more than any expansion before it, but it is also failing in just as many of them.

It's largely because they're getting most of their feedback and suggestions these days from Twitter rather than the official forums. Most of the fluff content is, sadly, designed to appease the very vocal portion of the game's player base that is more likely to spend hours sitting in Limsa taking screenshots of their character rather than engaging in actual content. There's actually been a lot of people speaking out here by comparison about the state of the game - often with constructive criticism and sensible suggestions being at the forefront.

The focus on fluff wouldn't even bother me if it meant more fan service for people who play male characters - but we're not getting much, if any of that.