What is going on with Square Enix and the 14 team?

[SturmChurro]

I'm not seeing what this had to do with what I said about female Roe and male Miqote setting the "gender counterpart" standard.

SE has seen twice now that when they gender-lock a race, players eventually demand gender counterparts to be unlocked. This happened in FFXI, then in 1.0 (which they corrected in 2.0), and then again in 5.0 (which they've now half-corrected). They have no excuse to keep making the same mistake.

If they don't want to keep making more work for themselves, they should do it right the first time.

You think I disagree that they should have done it right? I'm just trying to look at and present their point of view. Considering all the circumstances as they were, viera and hrothgar, as they were, were supposed to the "one last hurrah" as far as player races were concerned. Covid wasn't a factor at the time, nor do I think they believed the game would receive a ten year plan.

"Demanding" is exactly right, and the expectation that these races were "unfinished", is why I believe people are seeing SE, or Yoshida, appear resentful, or annoyed.

[CrownySuccubus]

You think I disagree that they should have done it right? I'm just trying to look at and present their point of view. Considering all the circumstances as they were, viera and hrothgar, as they were, were supposed to the "one last hurrah" as far as player races were concerned. Covid wasn't a factor at the time, nor do I think they believed the game would receive a ten year plan.

"Demanding" is exactly right, and the expectation that these races were "unfinished", is why I believe people are seeing SE appear resentful, or annoyed.

I really don't know what you are arguing against, to be quite honest. Again, none of this is the players' problem. Look, I understand the plight of the game devs (as in, the actual programmers and coders who have to do all this work -- not the suits and management types who tell them what they can and can't do and what to put in the game and what not to). No fan told them to make these races the "one last hurrah". No fan told them to gender lock the species. No fan told them to deliberately release the Viera/Hrothgar with limited glam options.

Whether it was management that told them "Aw, nobody's going to care. Just gender-lock the races and make them unable to equip certain glams" or the devs decided on it themselves because it was too much work, it's Square's own fault for how poorly things have gone.

I'm guessing SE figured this time could be different? People wanted a race that existed in previous games (female Viera) and bare in mind SE never had any visual concept for what male Viera looked like, so pretty much a 10+ year old lore was the reason for gender-locking of that race, which still in my opinion, is not such an atrocious thing. As I also said in the female Hrothgar thread, male Hrothgar probably were pretty much meant to be Viera's gender counterpart considering these are 'two unique races' being brought in at the same time.

And as I already said: they literally went through all this before with Galka/Mithra in FFXI and the Roegadyn/Miqote in FFXIV. Those races were also "gender counterparts" of each other, so Square already knew that fans weren't all that keen on being gender-locked. Especially when strictly on such superficial reasons as "Gurlz cute; Dudez beefcake".

To use a very over-quoted phrase: "...everywhere I looked, doing the exact same f-----g thing... over and over and over and over again thinking 'this time is gonna be different. No, no, no please... This time is gonna be different'."

[SturmChurro]

I really don't know what you are arguing against, to be quite honest. Again, none of this is the players' problem. Look, I understand the plight of the game devs (as in, the actual programmers and coders who have to do all this work -- not the suits and management types who tell them what they can and can't do and what to put in the game and what not to). No fan told them to make these races the "one last hurrah". No fan told them to gender lock the species. No fan told them to deliberately release the Viera/Hrothgar with limited glam options.

Whether it was management that told them "Aw, nobody's going to care. Just gender-lock the races and make them unable to equip certain glams" or the devs decided on it themselves because it was too much work, it's Square's own fault for how poorly things have gone.

I'm not really arguing against anything. I'm just trying to look at things from their point of view. My original reply was in context to why they might appear resentful or annoyed.

If you want my opinion, they added them to the game, they made promises (hair) that they didn't deliver on for two and a half years in regards to viera, almost three for hrothgar, and the hrothgar hairs lopped off their ears! They have routinely put out items of questionable quality, in regards to these races. They rarely if ever even acknowledge either of them. I think they should do better, acknowledge these races exist, and live up to their own promises. I, frankly, don't really care about a lot of their excuses. Other races were routinely receiving hairs throughout ShB, and they stated they hadn't even started looking into adding hairs to viera until the end of ShB! Having headgear not work for even iconic job gear annoys me... and more.

I'd need more time to compile all of my thoughts on this..

[TaleraRistain]

"Demanding" is exactly right, and the expectation that these races were "unfinished", is why I believe people are seeing SE, or Yoshida, appear resentful, or annoyed.

This. They tried to set out the expectations from the get-go and where limitations would be. Players had unreasonable expectations and now they're getting mad and insulting the devs for those unreasonable expectations. I'd get resentful and annoyed, too if someone completely ignored the warnings I gave them.

[SturmChurro]

This. They tried to set out the expectations from the get-go and where limitations would be. Players had unreasonable expectations and now they're getting mad and insulting the devs for those unreasonable expectations. I'd get resentful and annoyed, too if someone completely ignored the warnings I gave them.

I don't know if I'd go so far as to call it unreasonable necessarily. I can understand it from their point of view, but there are many, reasonable, criticisms about the treatment of these races that can be made.

For example, they said these races would receive hair from the start, there are quotes out there, saying "of course" they would receive hair - custom hair at that. Now Yoshida is apparently saying he told us these races wouldn't receive any hair at all. Almost as if adding hairs after three years is him doing viera and hrothgar players a favor. The fantasia issue with hrothgar was left for years, and then stealth "fixed" recently.

Speaking on this, I feel like island sanctuary is going to bring out the same sentiment in the community, where SE has already said to temper expectations, but there are many members of the community who believe it'll be the fix for housing, or that it will be a new instanced housing system. I can already imagine the outrage if and when it doesn't deliver on many players expectations.

[Rokke]

Speaking on this, I feel like island sanctuary is going to bring out the same sentiment in the community, where SE has already said to temper expectations, but there are many members of the community who believe it'll be the fix for housing, or that it will be a new instanced housing system. I can already imagine the outrage if and when it doesn't deliver on many players expectations.

I'm eagerly looking forward to the implosion. Yoshi said to temper expectations....while still not giving any real info on what the heck the feature will be. Its going to be glorious.

[Skyborne]

I'm eagerly looking forward to the implosion. Yoshi said to temper expectations....while still not giving any real info on what the heck the feature will be. Its going to be glorious.

At this point I'm expecting the island (if it isn't just infinitely delayed from 'EW launch feature' to 'never') to be a pretty spot where you just watch minions run around. My expectations are rock bottom... I guess I can go lower, though. How about you go to the instance, it crashes, locks you out of your account, then steals your credit card info and installs crypto miners on your PC?

[Valfreyja]

Yea, I think a lot of people were hoping it would be some more great content for the game. They teased it like 4-5months before endwalker came out. And then yoshi was like "just kidding don't get too hyped"? While i believe expecting nothing and being surprised is always the right mindset to go into things, hearing a dev say that leaves weird feelings in my stomach.

Think that was why it was delayed as well. They were expanding and working on it to make it better, after seeing the player hype.

[TaleraRistain]

I don't know if I'd go so far as to call it unreasonable necessarily. I can understand it from their point of view, but there are many, reasonable, criticisms about the treatment of these races that can be made.

For example, they said these races would receive hair from the start, there are quotes out there, saying "of course" they would receive hair - custom hair at that. Now Yoshida is apparently saying he told us these races wouldn't receive any hair at all. Almost as if adding hairs after three years is him doing viera and hrothgar players a favor. The fantasia issue with hrothgar was left for years, and then stealth "fixed" recently.

Speaking on this, I feel like island sanctuary is going to bring out the same sentiment in the community, where SE has already said to temper expectations, but there are many members of the community who believe it'll be the fix for housing, or that it will be a new instanced housing system. I can already imagine the outrage if and when it doesn't deliver on many players expectations.

Fair point and they can be called out on the promise of custom hair. But they did try to indicate these races would not be treated like other races and players assumed incorrectly they would be treated like other races in all ways even when being told that wasn't the case.

I think you're right about Island Sanctuary, too. They're warning people to temper expectations but I've seen people outright try to claim the devs said it would have instanced housing. Absolutely nowhere has that been the case.