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

[Kaurhz]

Here we go again, reading comprehension needs work. I wasn’t saying anything about YOUR specific glamour. I was saying there is a female antagonist glamour in the game already in the form of Edda. So what, hair being long=feminine? No offense but that’s a pretty ignorant stereotype and way of thinking. There’s no leaps in logic here. I’m just pointing out facts. Healers and casters always having robes isn’t an excuse to have overtly feminine ones. Look at cryptlurker robes. Those are still robes but aren’t very feminine. It doesn’t matter if they have a large female character playerbase, by that logic then i guess Hrothgar don’t deserve attention at all since so few people play them. Now of course that would be ignorant thinking but it’s essentially what you’re saying.

How about you elect to read the edit? Furthermore, this entire conversation essentially boils down to nonsensical stereotypes. Why are the vast majority of the fending-based gear more masculine? Why are an overwhelming majority of maiming sets masculine? Because that is the stigma which is associated with them. Like I said, this is very much prominent with many games, anime, films and such which depict magical, or magical related combat, lore, etc (Most of the time they're depicted as a robe/gown). My post does not say that they do not deserve attention, my post states and evidences that the game has an good majority of feminine characters which influences the direction of the game a whole lot more than Yoshida's personal preferences or roleplay material/direction.

Your own personal feelings aside the game has a pretty large and overwhelming feminine character-base. This has more influence than the leap in logic that Yoshida cares for feminine exclusively because he elected to roleplay as a feminine character.

Nowhere did my post even elude to the premise people don't deserve attention. Just that a majority of the attention is going to go in a direction according to the playerbase, and is moreso a basis for reasoning than the premise that females are being catered to because Yoshida likes females. - That's just a fact of matter. I also like to wear the Gosetsu, Thancred, Urianger, Hien, and Cid attires; Oh wait.. Nevermind, I can't because those are exclusive to males. I'm surprised you actually took my hairstyles comment seriously, honestly...

Just because there are more female player characters does not justify the sheer lack of options that men have.

In any case, no, that hairstyle is not a feminine one. It is a long hairstyle that is specific to men, reminiscent of how male singers used to wear their hair back in the 80s/70s whenever that era of history was.

Male Viera in general do a good job of portraying the "immortal wood elf" fantasy so of course a decent chunk of their hairstyles are long like that. Naturally I imagine that those of us who like playing those types of characters would like to have long hair that isn't full of daisies and bowties. It isn't beauty salon hair like female Viera have.

Male players by now should have had access to beards and more modern male hairstyles and female players should have, by default, the kinds of "heroine" feminine hairstyles sported by Viera/Au Ra players and should be able to access hair like Venat's by now.

That statement wasn't intended to be taken seriously, but I'll bite - It was being sarcastic, taking into account the person is under some illusion that robs is somehow a feminine product, despite robes and gowns being heavy tradition for casters, not exclusive to FFXIV, really. Completely ignoring the fact that by this selfsame extension one could query why are the vast majority of fending/maiming, and a good portion of striking gearsets intended to have a more masculine look? Well obviously because it's as much tradition for fending/maiming gearsets to look heavy, just as much as it is tradition for casters to be light with gowns and robes. But alas, this is a tangent.

The character creation and customisation in general is at a deficit on both the male and female counters. With many requests having gone ignored for years, be it with stubbles, beards, or other features and glamours such as Yurigir's Hairstyle, Yotsuyu's hairstyle and glamour (deflected as a "We generally don't support glamour for antagonists, despite Asahi's hairstyle being made available), in addition to the requested Lyse hairstyle, and dress, and no I don't mean the shirt and gloves. -- Many players' requests have gone ignored from both male and female areas of the game -- So to sit on these forums and try to make the inference that females have all the attention, with little being drawn to masculine on the premise that Hyur's have been asking for a stubble, or because the 9S glamour is missing is bad comedy, at best. I'm just calling it self-victimisation at this point. -- Especially when certain posters then proceed to try and invalidate or deflate these claims and issues because "We've been asking for longer".

[Lauront]

Just because there are more female player characters does not justify the sheer lack of options that men have.

The difference also isn't as pronounced as it used to be. It's something like 45/55 male/female last I checked and bunny boys have probably moved that needle further in favour of males. Unfortunately a demographic breakdown of the most recent LB stats isn't available, but the influx of new players over the summer saw a proportionate shift towards male characters. I'd expect there's more or less parity at this point. Even if it were just 30 or 40% that is still a considerable segment of the playerbase, that you can't overlook as a developer.

[Maltothoris]

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5941650

How bout this then? Why should there only be 4 people designing 17 jobs and more coming up in the future expansions? This was the same amount of people that worked on the jobs of ARR when there was only 9 so it made sense. Now that it's basically doubled and you can see that most likely due to lack of manpower, so many jobs are streamlined into either have two minutes cds etc.

Not to mention, there seems to be a growing number of people who are becoming more discontented with the state of the healers now, given the rise of mishapen chair and lucy pyre videos.

[Jybril]

There's 4 battle designers in this game?
We have 17 jobs and only FOUR people are running the show?
Holy Jesus lmaoooooo. Ain't none of them played a damn healer in their
life, that's for true. HIRE MORE please, HEALER mains preferably.

No wonder the game is getting simple as hell. You got 4 people
tryna figure crap out and now they're simplifying because they need a break LOL.

[KizuyaKatogami]

There's 4 battle designers in this game?
We have 17 jobs and only FOUR people are running the show?
Holy Jesus lmaoooooo. Ain't none of them played a damn healer in their
life, that's for true. HIRE MORE please, HEALER mains preferably.

No wonder they game is getting simple as hell. You got 4 people
tryna figure crap out and now they're simplifying because they need a break LOL.

What’s especially sad is this is a billion dollar company. F2p games have more battle designers than this game…

[Vercinotrix]

There's 4 battle designers in this game?
We have 17 jobs and only FOUR people are running the show?
Holy Jesus lmaoooooo. Ain't none of them played a damn healer in their
life, that's for true. HIRE MORE please, HEALER mains preferably.

No wonder the game is getting simple as hell. You got 4 people
tryna figure crap out and now they're simplifying because they need a break LOL.

They still only have four? My god I'd figured that at least have another by now, I think I learned that back in stormblood ffs.

[Ranhansha]

At this point I don't even know if I want XVI to succeed. Of course I would finally love a great game in the series after such a long time and another badge for the team, but I can't help but feel that they are sucking so many resources and manpower from XIV into that project that I wouldn't like to have that story repeated again. I mean, not even Koji Fox has been seriously involved in XIV for a while and no one knew until Yoshi-P told us. Can we have them back already and put an end to the excuses and the half finished stuff, please?

[IdowhatIwant]

At this point I don't even know if I want XVI to succeed. Of course I would finally love a great game in the series after such a long time and another badge for the team, but I can't help but feel that they are sucking so many resources and manpower from XIV into that project that I wouldn't like to have that story repeated again. I mean, not even Koji Fox has been seriously involved in XIV for a while and no one knew until Yoshi-P told us. Can we have them back already and put an end to the excuses and the half finished stuff, please?

FFXVI will succeed if people like devil may cry combat and a Ff story.

[aveyond-dreams]

At this point I don't even know if I want XVI to succeed. Of course I would finally love a great game in the series after such a long time and another badge for the team, but I can't help but feel that they are sucking so many resources and manpower from XIV into that project that I wouldn't like to have that story repeated again. I mean, not even Koji Fox has been seriously involved in XIV for a while and no one knew until Yoshi-P told us. Can we have them back already and put an end to the excuses and the half finished stuff, please?

Given the utter state of the rest of SE and the fact that the CEO is too busy being in love with NFTs to ensure that actual high quality video games are produced-FFXVI needs all the help it can get in order to prevent the mainline Final Fantasy series from suffering yet another stain on its reputation. While I am upset at the fact that FFXIV's most talented writing and localization team has been moved onto that project rather than remaining here, I absolutely understand the necessity of it.

FFXV's story, while it did have some impactful moments, was thrown together at the absolute last minute. FFVII Remake for some reason is flirting with warped time travel and there is no clear timeline of when we will be able to play its full story from start to finish. The trend of eternal development cycles resulting in products that stray too far from fan expectations has to end. Putting the team in charge of Heavensward's writing in charge of FFXVI's story was the most logical and successful decision they could have taken in this regard.

However, the current story trends we are seeing in FFXIV have also got to end because I signed up to play an FF game, not a visual novel with a localization team preoccupied with throwing in real-world nonsense into the game and whose combat jobs may be spontaneously ruined by people who think it's a good idea to take away the Samurai dopamine button, among other downright bizarre decisions. Whenever FFXVI releases, I hope to take a break from FFXIV and let this game sort itself out in the meantime.

While imperfect, being able to lose myself in the FFXV fandom was such a fun experience at the time and I hope to experience something similar with FFXVI. With actual heroes like Clive as its leading man, it'll be a decent change from the FFXIV fandom whose tastes exclusively revolve around G'raha Tia and fanfic comics of the Scions. Being able to feel something for characters who have endured actual pain like Clive or Noctis instead of throwaway fake sacrificial moments like the Scions in Ultima Thule will be quite refreshing.

[IkaraGreydancer]

Given the utter state of the rest of SE and the fact that the CEO is too busy being in love with NFTs to ensure that actual high quality video games are produced-FFXVI needs all the help it can get in order to prevent the mainline Final Fantasy series from suffering yet another stain on its reputation. While I am upset at the fact that FFXIV's most talented writing and localization team has been moved onto that project rather than remaining here, I absolutely understand the necessity of it.

FFXV's story, while it did have some impactful moments, was thrown together at the absolute last minute. FFVII Remake for some reason is flirting with warped time travel and there is no clear timeline of when we will be able to play its full story from start to finish. The trend of eternal development cycles resulting in products that stray too far from fan expectations has to end. Putting the team in charge of Heavensward's writing in charge of FFXVI's story was the most logical and successful decision they could have taken in this regard.

However, the current story trends we are seeing in FFXIV have also got to end because I signed up to play an FF game, not a visual novel with a localization team preoccupied with throwing in real-world nonsense into the game and whose combat jobs may be spontaneously ruined by people who think it's a good idea to take away the Samurai dopamine button, among other downright bizarre decisions. Whenever FFXVI releases, I hope to take a break from FFXIV and let this game sort itself out in the meantime.

While imperfect, being able to lose myself in the FFXV fandom was such a fun experience at the time and I hope to experience something similar with FFXVI. With actual heroes like Clive as its leading man, it'll be a decent change from the FFXIV fandom whose tastes exclusively revolve around G'raha Tia and fanfic comics of the Scions. Being able to feel something for characters who have endured actual pain like Clive or Noctis instead of throwaway fake sacrificial moments like the Scions in Ultima Thule will be quite refreshing.

You keep bringing up XIV being apparently a visual novel. Where tf are you getting that logic from?