Male Viera as a playable character! show your support

[Lauront]

*snip*

First problem is that those cost figures are fabricated to prove a point. I’d expect the missing genders to come at a much lower fraction of the overall expansion costs than that. It’s not that they lack the money to do it - they claim it’s a manpower issue. I’m not entirely convinced it’s as difficult to solve as Yoshi indicated but I suspect he didn’t want to say ‘we’ll only really make a decision on the matter once we see what the potential profitability is.’

Secondly, dislikes are irrelevant. All that matters to SE is whether there is adequate profit to be made from the addition of the feature relative to other options - and what Senn re-posted is a good indication of why there may be enough demand for that. If the model is designed well enough, it should accomplish that with ease. However, in the context of the question thread it’s even less relevant since you could say the same of any question asked. Frankly, a non argument.

[Alleo]

I truly believe its 6.0 or bust for their inclusion in ffxiv because by 7.0+ they may look at their 3rd MMO thus resources would start to be diverted.

I too believe that its either 6.0 or nothing. A MMO will not go on forever and if they put them in years down the line (like four years from now if its 7.0) it could just be that they are not bringing back in the costs they have produced to be created. And as you said, the amount of items will just be more and more.

[Duskane]

It's the animations that will be the biggest obstacle. It isn't just emotes, either - there's unique animations tied to many boss abilities such as those that throw a character into the air or drag them into quicksand.

also have to consider they have to fit correctly into every cut scenes and do the correct emote assigned to the race

[SturmChurro]

I too believe that its either 6.0 or nothing. A MMO will not go on forever and if they put them in years down the line (like four years from now if its 7.0) it could just be that they are not bringing back in the costs they have produced to be created. And as you said, the amount of items will just be more and more.

I think that entirely depends. WoW added multiple new races after like 14-15 years. Who says if they really wanted to add them they couldn't just work on them sparingly over a longer period of time?

[Angellos]

Let me begin by saying: I HATE THE VIERA.

With that being said, I also want to see male Viera and female Hrothgar added to the game. I do not, have not, and will never like gender locks: Not when it comes to outfits, hairstyles, and especially not races themselves. The male Viera, according to canon lore, are 50% less rare than male Miqo'te - but we have those now don't we? I understand why SE lacked the manpower and time to create the Viera and Hrothgar counterparts: This expansion has so much in it. I'm not overly angry that they weren't introduced right away but I will say beyond a shadow of a doubt that we should be promised male Viera and female Hrothgar at a later date, once the devs have had the time to properly work on them (And fitting everyone for head items.)

[Maverick_Haas]

snip

Yes, the numbers are fabricated to prove a point, but they are roughly based logically that content will always be more important over a gender of a race. Also, I work in the tech industry, so I understand the cost of development. Tech debt is always an expensive yet low priority issue. everyone talks about it, everyone says they'll get to it later, but until money and interest are both put up for it, it'll never happen. And interestingly enough, it's okay from a tech perspective that it doesn't. Sure it limits your technology and gives you lower quality software, but in the games industry it certainly isn't a big of a problem as, say, EMS and hospital related technology.

However, saying manpower != money is a logical fallacy. In order to get said manpower, money must be used. You could argue that SE certainly has the money to afford said manpower, and I agree they most likely do, more than enough even. But, referring to what senn posted, I don't agree that demand truly reflects what people want and the poll itself is actually not a good representation of actual demand. If we understand the issue correctly, it would cost money and resources that would be diverted off of other content. If the poll had been set up to properly reflect that there's a demand over all other content, or at least content that matters from a value perspective, then we'd be having a different conversation.

So hear me out for a bit. Personally, I'm not a fan of gender locking myself. Not that I believe it's sexists or racists or whatever negative reasoning one wants to use, but because I believe more choices are better, so long as it meets the artistic vision of the creator. So of course, I would vote generally against gender-locking. So if SE could easily flip a switch and add them in, honestly there is no problem. However where things get dirty is that it's been said that it wouldn't be as easy as such. If the manpower requirement is such that they can't procure it, they must know the technological requirements, thus they know how much money it would cost.

[Maverick_Haas]

For a company (or better yet their investors) to do an expensive pivot for 2 genders of 2 races, they would need to have expectations of good ROI.
If SE does this, I expect a few possible possibilities:

1. SE cuts content: player retention will drop. We already know a lot of people unsub 1 month after an expansion because they played all the msq content. Sometimes they come back when all the raids have been dropped. But with no content they are interested in releasing, they'll not resub.

2. SE sells the missing genders: Most likely suicide by consumers.

3. SE added more items for the pivot, such as better shader tech, HD textures, more reliance on GPU, etc...: given that the inherit issue, iirc, was an engine+database issue. This is the most likely outcome, but probably takes longer and would be more expensive, but sets up FFXIV to be longer term with ROI being gauged over player retention as we move into Gen9-10. This is almost tantamount to creating a new engine though...

4. SE was given free money especially dedicated to this: This is the most unlikely situation. Unless you, the players, fund the project to do what even SE Corp or investors don't want to fund. Investors putting the money into this would know they would not get anything back, thus why would they? SE Corp putting money into this directly from other franchises and such would mean possibly hurting other games in development.

5. SE finds a way to get around the technological and manpower issues at a low cost: Not going to sit here and say it's not possible to find a better solution over time. I'm an engineer after all, finding a cheaper solution to do things better is part of my job. However this has a catch, when will this solution be found? Will it be found in our lifetime? Do we want to dedicate resources to research into it, even if it leads us nowhere and fail? It's a time vs money issue.

So yeah, unless YoshiP (and by extension, SE) has been lying to us about the issues surrounding this, it all comes down to what SE stands to make from it. If everyone who wanted to be male viera decided to drop their subs, SE would still make more money than if people dropped subs due to lack of content.

If they have been lying, and it would be easy.... then.... why? If there's a need, and the cost of it is less than what you stand to make, why wouldn't you? Doesn't make sense for a company that's been around for 30 years to make such an illogical business decision.

[Yana-Chan]

They told us they “might” add them if they come up with the money and resources. They also said they wouldn’t cut content just for this. They made it pretty clear this isn’t a priority right now, the expansion is. There is still a chance of getting them because It’s a genderlock. Maybe this was their plan to let SE know a lot of people are upset and maybe gave them more money to get the resources to do so. I just don’t understand why we can’t get a yes it will happen but just don’t know when. Surely they will have the resources at some point?

[Lauront]

Yes, the numbers are fabricated to prove a point, but they are roughly based logically that content will always be more important over a gender of a race.

I disagree on that last point. There's a lot of content in this game that barely sees any use. Obviously if you began taking away from dungeons and raids and similar content, then you would have a problem, but they have not framed the issue in that way - the tradeoff they've postulated in regards to texture upgrades more generally is a lower gear output rate.

However, saying manpower != money is a logical fallacy. In order to get said manpower, money must be used. You could argue that SE certainly has the money to afford said manpower, and I agree they most likely do, more than enough even. But, referring to what senn posted, I don't agree that demand truly reflects what people want and the poll itself is actually not a good representation of actual demand. If we understand the issue correctly, it would cost money and resources that would be diverted off of other content. If the poll had been set up to properly reflect that there's a demand over all other content, or at least content that matters from a value perspective, then we'd be having a different conversation.

His post is not referring to a poll but the likes on the OP and their statistical extrapolation. Yes, SE would need to go a bit farther than that to gain an accurate idea of how much demand there is, and it certainly would help if they were more specific in what the trade-off would be, if we're not talking about a straightforward budget increase to the game.

As for that formulation being a logical fallacy, I would disagree that that is one altogether - money is certainly necessary to acquire the manpower but that doesn't mean the supply will be there. Given the task at hand (i.e. it is one off in nature), said availability is not an issue either, but as it's a short-term project it's not one that would readily lend itself to expanding their core team but instead would require solutions like taking on contract workers or outsourcing, which come with their own upsides and downsides, the latter of which the company may not be willing to accept, ultimately reducing it to a manpower issue even if the funds are there. Unless, of course, they are taking a wider view of the matter of asset creation and graphics/texture upgrades altogether, which then leads into...

3. SE added more items for the pivot, such as better shader tech, HD textures, more reliance on GPU, etc...: given that the inherit issue, iirc, was an engine+database issue. This is the most likely outcome, but probably takes longer and would be more expensive, but sets up FFXIV to be longer term with ROI being gauged over player retention as we move into Gen9-10. This is almost tantamount to creating a new engine though...

It is certainly something they are considering and eyeing up and have broached upon this of their own initiative during the EU Fanfest. I've said in the past the addition of the missing genders can be collapsed into this issue given the challenge it poses, and so this will likely overtake it in priority. This may be why they're so reluctant to comment much more on the issue altogether, because the above is a big commitment but also one which could buy the game several years more of longevity if handled well. It's largely why this interests me even more than the missing gender issue.

SE Corp putting money into this directly from other franchises and such would mean possibly hurting other games in development.

They have actually done so in the past to salvage the title, and at the same time dip into it to fund their other projects. However, it's not particularly likely on this occasion, no.

[zeylos]

Page 900 is legit-legit happening...

This thread will get more and more pages until male viera are added, so this isnt going down until 6.0 at least, and then it will most likely become a celebration thread