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

[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..