Male Viera as a playable character! show your support

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Well to be fair the healer situation was a complicated mess. They were clearly not balanced at times. Im curious with this new healer how the other 3 will be handled in the next xpac. But thats a whole other topic.

If you saw the Showcase, so far the 1st thing we know is that the 4 healers are gonna be classified as a "Pure Healer and a "Shield Healer"
Wht and Ast will now be Pure Healers (Amusingly They play the same, only diff is the Draw system)
SCH and SGE(?) will be Shield Healers.

If Scholar is anything to go on, a Shield Healer will Prioritize Mitigation and probly have more DPS options. (I know, ShB they took away alot of DPS, but that might change now)

[Melichoir]

If you saw the Showcase, so far the 1st thing we know is that the 4 healers are gonna be classified as a "Pure Healer and a "Shield Healer"
Wht and Ast will now be Pure Healers (Amusingly They play the same, only diff is the Draw system)
SCH and SGE(?) will be Shield Healers.

If Scholar is anything to go on, a Shield Healer will Prioritize Mitigation and probly have more DPS options. (I know, ShB they took away alot of DPS, but that might change now)

Oh yeah, forgot they mentioned that. But Im still curious about the skill layout. If they go with DPS Orientated vs Mitigation, arent theyre gonna run into the issue in previous xpacs where SCH was the defacto choice for savage cause its damage output was pretty high. Though maybe they could die damage to mitigation (as in if shield pops, it deals damage, otherwise its just flat mitigation).

[KizuyaKatogami]

Well to be fair the healer situation was a complicated mess. They were clearly not balanced at times. Im curious with this new healer how the other 3 will be handled in the next xpac. But thats a whole other topic.

(The healer situation still is a complicated mess)but you’re right that’s a different topic hehe

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Oh yeah, forgot they mentioned that. But Im still curious about the skill layout. If they go with DPS Orientated vs Mitigation, arent theyre gonna run into the issue in previous xpacs where SCH was the defacto choice for savage cause its damage output was pretty high. Though maybe they could die damage to mitigation (as in if shield pops, it deals damage, otherwise its just flat mitigation).

(I know we are going off topic, but Im gonna be the lazy one and NOT make or find a separate Thread. Call the police, Ill fite 'dem :P )

I think he also said that the Optimal choice is gonna be to Balance a Shield Healer with a Pure Healer. I dont know if that means they are gonna do some balancing or set things up to where Having 2 Shield healers; who lets assume that have more DPS options then Pure Healers....will be a detriment because by taking out a Pure Healer you run a risk of not surviving some encounters and challenges. Like you can only Mitigate so much damage, now you need REAL heals.
Id like it if they could find a way to do that, because there will always be a meta, but I think every Job should be viable in any composition. Plus it would just be weak if Scholar and Sage become mandatory and everyone sleeps on WHT and Now Ast.

[RyuDragnier]

Oh yeah, forgot they mentioned that. But Im still curious about the skill layout. If they go with DPS Orientated vs Mitigation, arent theyre gonna run into the issue in previous xpacs where SCH was the defacto choice for savage cause its damage output was pretty high. Though maybe they could die damage to mitigation (as in if shield pops, it deals damage, otherwise its just flat mitigation).

Odds are Sage will be balanced in relation to SCH alone, so either one will be viable in the mitigation department for shield healers. That's a separate situation from the importance on whether or not Viera (and Hrothgar) can visibly wear the Sage AF helm.

[LittleCorvid]

I don't even understand why they genderlocked Viera and Hrothgar. Sure, male Viera live in the trees, whatever. There's also literally millions of white mages running around everywhere. Also I can't say I even know a single thing about female Hrothgar. If anyone has information on female Hrothgar please tell me about them... But when I first learned that they were genderlocked, it honestly just came across as they were short on time or something. Same issue with the hats; it's like they just shoved them out to they player base before they were complete. No good reason to have an aesthetically limited race in this game, considering how much hair and clothes clip anyways.

Plus for me, aesthetics is pretty important. I like playing dress up. I hope SE fixes the hat issue and gives us the other sex for Viera and Hrothgar.

[Melichoir]

I don't even understand why they genderlocked Viera and Hrothgar. Sure, male Viera live in the trees, whatever. There's also literally millions of white mages running around everywhere. Also I can't say I even know a single thing about female Hrothgar. If anyone has information on female Hrothgar please tell me about them... But when I first learned that they were genderlocked, it honestly just came across as they were short on time or something. Same issue with the hats; it's like they just shoved them out to they player base before they were complete. No good reason to have an aesthetically limited race in this game, considering how much hair and clothes clip anyways.

Plus for me, aesthetics is pretty important. I like playing dress up. I hope SE fixes the hat issue and gives us the other sex for Viera and Hrothgar.

To catch you up with 1k+ pages of text, the Long Story Short was the devs wanted to have their cake and eat it and tried to please two different groups at once. Essentially they changed gears about mid way through development to include viera, at the expense of Female Hrothgars. They wanted the more beastlike race to give options to players coming from other MMOs, while giving Viera to the hardcore fanbase that revolves around them. So we got what we got on release. The sticking point unfortunately is that with the current 'character creation' engine they use, every time they introduce a new race (or sex), they have to more or less go back and manually fit all existing equipment onto those models. That alone is a huge burden on their resources, especially when every new xpac drops, thats gonna be an easy 100+ new peices they have to manually adjust. Top this off with the fact that they have issues implementing both Viera and Hrothgar in terms of customization (lack of hats, hairstyles, and other aspects), and of course you get enough of the player base (though probably not the majority) not happy with how they went about this.

What I and others have pointed out, though, that the thing holding them back is the antiquated engine for characters. If they were to just sink the energy and resources into updating it to be on par with more modern MMOs, theyd be killing a flock of birds with a stick of dynamite. Itd give the people who want more customization what they want, help insulate the game against showing its age, fix a lot of the issues associated with adding races, and correct issues with Hrothgar and Viera that exist. Considering the lack of updates on Hrothgar and Viera along with other things, there is a ok possibility that this is what theyre intending to do. No guarentees though, just cross your fingers.

[MikkoAkure]

What I and others have pointed out, though, that the thing holding them back is the antiquated engine for characters. If they were to just sink the energy and resources into updating it to be on par with more modern MMOs, theyd be killing a flock of birds with a stick of dynamite. Itd give the people who want more customization what they want, help insulate the game against showing its age, fix a lot of the issues associated with adding races, and correct issues with Hrothgar and Viera that exist. Considering the lack of updates on Hrothgar and Viera along with other things, there is a ok possibility that this is what theyre intending to do. No guarentees though, just cross your fingers.

Yoshi-P already addressed this years ago and said that the level of effort to go back and fix everything wouldn't be worth the result. He said that at that point, they might as well make a new game. Even if Yoshi-P wanted to overhaul the code, it's SE that would make the call and provide him the budget and other resources in order to make that a reality and I don't think that's ever going to happen. I don't believe there is a reason for SE to think that would make sense and lead to them getting more paying customers or higher retention rates that could cover all of the costs required for this.

Also, I think the state of viera and hrothgar is due to rushing, compromising, and believing that the players would accept their decisions for having 1 gender per race and no hats. It doesn't make sense for them to have any secret objective.

[ItMe]

(I know we are going off topic, but Im gonna be the lazy one and NOT make or find a separate Thread. Call the police, Ill fite 'dem :P )

I think he also said that the Optimal choice is gonna be to Balance a Shield Healer with a Pure Healer.

Part of me hopes they'll go all the way with the idea and in trials & raids one of the healer slots will be specific to pure healers and one will be for shield healers.
Split the role.

[Melichoir]

Yoshi-P already addressed this years ago and said that the level of effort to go back and fix everything wouldn't be worth the result. He said that at that point, they might as well make a new game. Even if Yoshi-P wanted to overhaul the code, it's SE that would make the call and provide him the budget and other resources in order to make that a reality and I don't think that's ever going to happen. I don't believe there is a reason for SE to think that would make sense and lead to them getting more paying customers or higher retention rates that could cover all of the costs required for this.

Also, I think the state of viera and hrothgar is due to rushing, compromising, and believing that the players would accept their decisions for having 1 gender per race and no hats. It doesn't make sense for them to have any secret objective.

I dont think there is a hidden agenda. YoshiP stated what he did because at that time, that was the case. FFXIV has been known to run a shoe string budget and yet turned out fairly successful. So not having the resources to do a lot of what we want was the norm. But that model likely will have to change, particularly with how successful ShB was. The simple fact FFXIV:ARR was released in 2013 with a character engine that was already outdated by its launch, and has not received all that much attention since launch. Things they should be able to implement fairly easily are incredibly difficult for the devs. Not to mention weird quirks within the engine (lalafell breast sliders?). And spending time to update the engine so they can streamline other processes (like the issue with armor and glamour) would mean spending money and time now to save costs later. This is incredibly common in virtually every business enterprise. Every so often, spending a hunk of cash to streamline internal processes for more efficiency and long term benefits. Also, if they were to do it, they could potentially give us those off sexes that people want.

So addressing the character creation engine resolves a whole slew of requests and issues that lie specifically with that part of the game, and will help extend the games lifespan and remain competitive on the MMO market.

Now as I said before, this isnt a guarantee. They may just stick to what they have and continue to struggle with it no matter how they proceed. But it makes more sense long term to update the engine as that would give them a lot more flexibility going forward and would likely pay for itself a lot quicker than you might suggest. It also explains why there has been almost no movement on fixing hrothgar/viera, would enable the possibility of off sexes, and be a selling point for the next xpac.

It's also worth noting that flying in ARR realms was once upon a time "Never going to happen". Yet devs took time to do that. And that is a pretty hefty thing to do because there are huge areas in the ARR maps that needed fixing. Taking on heavy tasks to update the game and keep it fresh is not unheard of.