Male Viera as a playable character! show your support

[Theodric]

It's not impossible for such limitations to be overcome. WoW is but one of various examples of competitors who have completely revamped large elements of their respective game and code. PSO2 is a good example as is ESO. The former completely revamped the graphics to be more in line with modern expectations and the latter has a habit of adding new features with each major patch that bring life to older zones - many of which are quite large.

[Yencat]

"It's too hard" might be wearing thin but as was pointed out that's not what they said about this, they said it takes too many resources, which is unfortunate but it's a perfectly valid reason.

Now they may have found a way around it or found the resources to do it and we'll find out soon enough, but something taking too many resources is not nearly as much of a cop-out response as "too hard".

It's probably more honest and candid than most of the reasons they give for why they can't/won't do certain stuff.

[SturmChurro]

The reason they gave was that it would slow their patch schedule, because effectively female viera/male hrothgar were one full race. Male viera/female hrothgar would be another full race. A new race would be a permanent hindrance on future patches, and scheduling, along with whatever else new they have come up with for the expansion. As I have said before, the game may be better off in the long run without them adding the missing genders, and the game seems to be doing more than fine without them. Frankly, I wonder how pushed back our patches would have been after Covid if they had included the missing genders in the first place (two new races).

[WoW]

Male Viera are just practicing social distancing. But from 6 malms.

[LisSquid]

I hate to chime into the "but WoW" argument but allied races cannot be considered unique and new in the way adding m viera and f hrothgar are. Blizzard was only able to give us so many because they were reusing assets they had already made for the expansion.

"But FFXIV could add them as npcs and then playable as well!"

That is true, however you'll notice that PC models have an astronomically larger pool of animations to code than the average npc gets. NPCs on WoW use the same skeletons and rigs as known races to save time. The pool of animations on WoW is much smaller.

With covid, patches coming in light, and everything else 2020 has thrown at us.. I'd much rather they put off the missing genders for when they have more time and resources. I assume that is what is going to happen anyway, but I'd hate to see them put in Limited Race 2.0 featuring two hairstyles and one face! Please look forward to it.

[Awha]

Truth be told I get it might be a tough pill to swallow, but the cost benefit analysis does not sway in favor of adding them. "Maybe" if they had more dev time and in office hours it might have worked out, but with covid and stuff not seeing it. At this point what logical sense would it make to take on a project that would add to even more delays that must be happening due to covid?

[Starshower]

I still hope they add both missing genders... I don't want to give up hope until the announcements on the 5th. If they can't do it because of covid I fear what else will be cut back from the expansion...

[Awha]

I still hope they add both missing genders... I don't want to give up hope until the announcements on the 5th. If they can't do it because of covid I fear what else will be cut back from the expansion...

True that is a valid concern. I just hope they prioritize content that services the widest gambit.

[Lauront]

I still hope they add both missing genders... I don't want to give up hope until the announcements on the 5th. If they can't do it because of covid I fear what else will be cut back from the expansion...

Especially considering that they already took off 3 months to plan around it, have already shifted priority to overhauling crafting and say they're at around 90% productivity even with remote working, and I am guessing the final 10% is more to do with voice acting and some other contracted out work more than anything. Beyond that the patch schedule is where it was. As for the cost-benefit criterion, I'd be more sympathetic to the argument if it were more widely applied across content, since a lot of marginal content seems to scrape by with minimal uptake to justify its presence...

Really, a lot of the difficulty here lies in how outdated the engine is. So it's not that these problems are impossible for them to solve, because they're not, but that they might not want to incur the cost of improving or overhauling the engine. Which is fine, but for some of us it is a little disappointing and makes us that much less invested in the game.

[Awha]

Engine overall or major improvements that would allow them to have an easier time dealing with the issues related to having ARR put together with duct tape and glue are pipe dreams and by no means should any reasonable person thing that will ever be on the table. Being disappointed over something that would never be a reality is a personal problem and not SE's.