Why FFXIV is The Best

[strawberrycake11]

So I would say FFXIV is one of the best, if not the very best, mmorpg on the market. And I'm sure many people would agree with me, because FFXIV has a LOT of subscribers for a game that exists in a time where paid subscription for mmos are not the norm.

We all like FFXIV for a lot of different reasons because we each value different aspects of the mmorpg experience. But I think we can all agree that it is quality. It's quality that we are okay to pay for, monthly, because we are paying to play the best mmo. We could easily switch over to any of the many free or pay-once mmorpgs out there, but we stick with FFXIV because we love it. And many of us pay even more than the normal subscription, with retainers and all, plus the Cash Shop with ridiculously priced items that we all know are ridiculous. Heck, we don't even -need- a cash shop in a subscription mmo, because it's a subscription! Cash shops became a thing more for non-subscription-based mmos to continue making money. But we accept Mog Station, and throw our money at $20 fictional dresses and $50 virtual character upgrades because we like the game, we like Square Enix, and we are confident in trusting them and supporting them with our money. Compared to other mmorpgs, FFXIV could be said to be way too pricey, but we can agree that we are paying more for a better product.

And one of the things that makes FFXIV great is that it doesn't have character limitations. There's six races, with two clans or variants, which can all be male or female, and can all play as any job they'd like. They can switch jobs at will! They can master all jobs on one character, and they can fantasia to any other race they'd like without losing anything at all. Very few items are gender-locked, including some items that would be considered very feminine by social standards, or very masculine. And the items that are gender-locked almost always have a version for the other gender. So, you want to play a hulking lizard man in a kimono with hot pink nails? Go for it. Anything's possible, really. And that's GREAT. A lot of mmorpgs don't have that. We can have fully customized characters with their own houses and plots of land that are color-coordinated to match our outfits. It's crazy.


But this wasn't always the case. In 1.0, if you wanted to play as a male miqo'te, you were out of luck. If you wanted to play as a female roegadyn, sorry, nope. And nobody really complained about it, because that was, and still is, unfortunately the norm quite often. The cutesy or especially elegant race being female-locked and the big and buff or especially furry race being male-locked has been a common sight across the landscape of mmorpgs throughout the years and it's just kind of accepted. But what did Yoshi-P do in A Realm Reborn? Abolished the gender lock. Male miqo'te are playable, female roegadyn are playable, and suddenly, that makes the game a heck of a lot better. It adds life and vibrancy to the world that we didn't notice was missing. It makes other games with gender-locks suddenly seem stunted and awkward. It's like, why wouldn't you be able to play as male or female for one race but not the other? It just makes sense. It's normal. And male miqo'te went on to be one of the most populous groups in the game, second only to hyur when comparing populations of male character models in-game (roe are still last). Male miqote are still very rare in the lore, and very few NPCs appear (especially Keepers, I think I can count male Keeper NPCs on one hand). But we're the Warrior of Light and we can be a hideaway forest catboy that came out from under the tree branches to follow the call of Hydaelyn if we choose to. And they said that this was how they were gonna do it. Gender-locking was a thing of the past.

Except it wasn't. So, yes, this is a "male viera and female hrothgar" thread. But I'm not going to use words like "sexism" or "lore" (even though I believe it is quite sexist and the lore is totally accepting of them) because that's what white knights seem to jumping on and causing endless cyclical arguments with. Stop complaining, stop whining, stop throwing a fit, etc. etc. Be happy with what you get!

No.

I'm disappointed because I expected more. And no, it wasn't a stupid expectation, it was completely reasonable given the circumstances. I trusted them to continue as they'd always been- actually, I trusted them to improve, because this is the third expansion, and it should be the best we've had yet. We've always had both male and female options for everything. That's one of the things that set FFXIV apart from other mmo options, that's one of the things that made it a cut above. And it was told to us that this was the case right from the beginning, but that promise is now broken. And they didn't just break the promise, they hid it. They knew male viera were something that people really wanted, and had wanted ever since they showed concept art of them before Heavansward. They knew people would love to play them, based on how people would love to play miqo'te. They knew people were clamoring to see them because it was EVERYWHERE. You could literally hear people in the audience calling out "male viera!" in that livestream. So Yoshi-P, the devs, Square Enix- they just led us along. "Where's the male viera?" we asked, after Viera were revealed as a race properly. "Wait until Japan Fanfest," they said with a winkyface. They handled things poorly, they acted coy- it was all just strange. A lot of people would be unhappy, and they knew that, yet they did it anyway- but it's almost like they didn't want to deal with the consequences of their decision so just skirted around the issue until the very thing at the very last keynote.

And now what we've got is something that nobody asked for and nobody expected. Something that is not of the same level of quality we've come to expect from this game. We hold them to a higher standard, and this is not cutting it. It's a disappointment, it's a letdown, and it's made all the more worse by how the news was handled. If we wanted gender locking, there are a million other mmorpgs we could flock to, and many of them are free to play. Why should we continue giving Square Enix the same amount of money if they are going to dip in quality, not improve?

Gender locking is bad, plain and simple. Because it gives us half of something. We get two halves of a puzzle that don't fit together. People keep saying, you should be more mad about the fact that there's no new healer! No. No healer was ever teased, no healer was ever hinted at, and they most certainly did not give us half a healer.

You can come up with all the excuses you want, but it doesn't change the fact that a gender lock is only one half of a whole. We want a quality mmorpg experience. They didn't have enough time? Extend the release date. We'll be fine waiting. We want a finished product, not an unfinished one. Didn't have enough budget? Well increase the budget, and stop taking away the mountains of money FFXIV makes and spending it on other Square Enix projects.

So, yes, this is disappointing. This is saddening, and it can really affect some people because it's really hard when something you love so much can suddenly blindside you by taking away one of the reasons you love it so much. And for the rest of us, it's still not a good omen. It's a broken promise. How many more do you think they'll break? What else do you think they'll do to cut corners? We're already not able to wear headgear on viera or hrothgar. How else will they take advantage of complacent fans?

Yeah, that's an exaggeration. But at the same time, it's not, because there is indeed a bit of apprehension now. There's less hope for many of us, and less hype. An mmorpg runs on hype because it's always continuing and ongoing. This whole thing? This just isn't a good sign.

[strawberrycake11]

((Hadn't realized yet how to make one big post, lol))

[LaylaTsarra]

You can bypass character limit by editing your post to add to what you are saying.

[Bongaboi]

The community will need to get over it and they will. Wait and watch.

[Anzaman]

Release expansion when it was intended and have male Viera with Patch 5.3 on January 10, 2020
or
Delay expansion until January 10, 2020 and we'll have absolutely nothing between 4.58 to 5.0 during that time?

I'll pref. them to release missing genders later and keep expansion release date as it is.

[manickitty]

Release expansion when it was intended and have male Viera with Patch 5.3 on January 10, 2020
or
Delay expansion until January 10, 2020 and we'll have absolutely nothing between 4.58 to 5.0 during that time?

I'll pref. them to release missing genders later and keep expansion release date as it is.

Or in the same timeframe, they could have released one complete race instead of two incomplete ones, which arguably would be easier, since you don't have to create lore for two races.

[Zsolen]

It is not bad plain and simple. You don't get quality if you keep changing your own lore. Star Wars did that. It created a weird unwieldy EU for a long time with some of it god and some of it really bad. If SE implemented male Viera as a playable race, it would be lowering their standard.

Also, I remember people asking for Ronso or a more bestial race.

You asked for Viera and got it. It's a race where we only ever see the females for lore reasons. As a result, we ended up with male only Ronso to balance it out. It's really not that complicated.

[Anzaman]

Or in the same timeframe, they could have released one complete race instead of two incomplete ones, which arguably would be easier, since you don't have to create lore for two races.

What's done is done, it's useless to complain about it at this point.

Or would you pref. them to scrap races completely now, hm?

Was it useless to complain about no Male Miqo and Femroe, hm?

Eh, not really, people got what they wanted.

But in current situation some people are even demanding for whole expansion to be delayed, when in above case they had Miqo/Roe prepared for planned 2.0 release date to begin with.

So, I mean - yeah, currently complaining about male Viera/female Ronso might lead to somewhere, but at the same time, they might have already plans to get those for 6.0 as new races aren't planned for it, thus it'd free development time to get proper models for them instead of rushed attempts mid-expansion.

[strawberrycake11]

You can bypass character limit by editing your post to add to what you are saying.

OH COOL THANKS!

[manickitty]

What's done is done, it's useless to complain about it at this point.

Or would you pref. them to scrap races completely now, hm?

Was it useless to complain about no Male Miqo and Femroe, hm?