Thinking about it... Has Square been prepping for April Fool's?

[KikoriL]

Pretext: I don't care much about SB (which one? You decide!), my laptop probably won't meet the benchmark and I'm not dropping $700+ just to buy the expansion and new hardware. But...

- No new healer
- The long-anticipated Dancer's a DPS despite historically doing (de-)buffs more than damage
- Gender-locked roles
- Missed a chance to show off the vicious, stealthy male Viera
- Hrothgar looks low-quality, like it's unfinished art

- April Fool's Day is only a little more than one week after the fanfests.

Anyone else got an inkling this is a setup?

[Dawntracker]

Pretext: I don't care much about SB (which one? You decide!), my laptop probably won't meet the benchmark and I'm not dropping $700+ just to buy the expansion and new hardware. But...

- No new healer
- The long-anticipated Dancer's a DPS despite historically doing (de-)buffs more than damage
- Gender-locked roles
- Missed a chance to show off the vicious, stealthy male Viera
- Hrothgar looks low-quality, like it's unfinished art

- April Fool's Day is only a little more than one week after the fanfests.

Anyone else got an inkling this is a setup?

Yes. there is no expansion.

April fools!

[cicatriz313]

What's funny is people see what they want to see. People said the Viera trailer was low quality unfinished goods too. Now they're saying look at how better Viera looks compared to Hrothgar!

[Thefates]

What's funny is people see what they want to see. People said the Viera trailer was low quality unfinished goods too. Now they're saying look at how better Viera looks compared to Hrothgar!

They were saying Viera looked unfinished because they didn't show a lot of variety. Not many people were saying that what was shown actually looked bad, except maybe their emotes.

[Illianaro]

I'm inclined to doubt SE would set up an April Fool's prank quite as elaborate as you're suggesting, though some things I personally wish could be revealed as jokes. But, to quote Wheel of Time: "If wishes were wings, pigs would fly."

Now, I'll set up a reminder, and if April 1st comes round and this does come to pass, I'll come back here and eat my crow.

[KikoriL]

eat my crow.

Freshly Googled, I'm gonna start using that now.

[Illianaro]

Freshly Googled, I'm gonna start using that now.

Sounds delicious, doesn't it?

[Skivvy]

My take on the items:

- No new healer - This is a bit odd to me, but Ranged DPS also only has 2 jobs ATM as well.

- The long-anticipated Dancer's a DPS despite historically doing (de-)buffs more than damage - My only experience with DNC is from XI. In XI, it can toss out some buffs, true, but it can hold its own as a DD as well. I'm totally OK with this one myself.

- Gender-locked roles - - I'm personally mixed on this one. I didn't think SE would go the gender-lock route, especially after they brought in female highlanders, male miqo'te, and female roegadyn. I do feel for the people who were looking forward to playing that male viera and I get the disappointment. On the flip side, I sort of like some gender locked races (again, like in XI). It does make them stand out more, brings a bit of uniqueness to the race itself. I have played games where I couldn't pick the gender I wanted, and that bummed me out a bit, but I ended up with something else that I ended up loving so all was well.

- Missed a chance to show off the vicious, stealthy male Viera - I liked this version presented(sorry I don't know how to insert links properly) https://i.imgur.com/ECtaVNx.jpg. I think the male would have been just fine. SE alone knows the real reason why they weren't implemented. People need to stop with all the insane accusations.

- Hrothgar looks low-quality, like it's unfinished art - I actually like em :X

[wereotter]

- The long-anticipated Dancer's a DPS despite historically doing (de-)buffs more than damage - My only experience with DNC is from XI. In XI, it can toss out some buffs, true, but it can hold its own as a DD as well. I'm totally OK with this one myself.

I think a lot of people were basing that speculation on FFXI alone and assuming dancer.... for me, however, my exposure to dancer was from FFVI and FFT where it definitely was NOT a healing job. FFVI it functioned more like a berserker role where once you assigned Mog a dance, that's all you get for the rest of the fight or until Mog dies. In FFT, it was a female only job (thankfully they didn't copy that over given races are gender locked... why not gender locked jobs too!) that you unlocked by mastering all the physical classes on a female character, and then it kept to the back dishing out debuffs and enemy damage, so definitely not a healer there either.

As for the OP suggestion this is all a prank, if you believe that, you're only setting yourself up to be disappointed. Best you can hope for now is the addition of a healing job at a later time, and the expansion of the two new races later. They did say this was the last new races, so they can no pull the "technically" card if they want to make Male Viera and female Ronso later while still keeping true to their word that they're not adding a new race. At least this is my hope, they likely knew the player base wanted the Viera and they wanted a more beastial race, and the higher ups said they can only have one more race added, so they pulled a trick that will let them finish both down the line.

[Racen]

All you people complaining about no new healer, well I haven't had a new ranged physical job since Heavensward either and there are only two of them. Seems like bringing it up to speed with all the other roles is just as important as a healer. Also BRD is the only legitimate choice for ranged physical atm because MCH is awful to play if your ping is higher than 50ms.