Letter from the Producer LXII

[KageTokage]

Wait a second. Did I miss something? All races can be heterochromic, isn't it? It's an option in eyes color when you create character, always was, at least since 2.16 when I started to play.

I guess that's what happens when you've never bothered looking at the options for any races other then Miqo'te/Au Ra.

Well, that and I've never seen a non-Miqo'te/Au Ra character with heterochromia.

[RukiaFae]

Wow I love the finished look to the Hrothgar. It looks so much better.

[KokonoeAiyoko]

Talks about adding a 4th tank to help with the balance but then says cannot add a 4th healer for the sake of the balance.

Then talks about how there's only 2 ranged melee DPS so they feel they are doing good by adding another ignoring the fact that idk theres a ton of DPS!? Who cares if there's only two melee ranged, it's all under an umbrella.

And of course, their gender locked races ordeal which they try to defend but you can't really defend that nonsense. 1.0 was criticized for this and they did away with this stupid locking with 2.0, but it's like we're reverting back.

[Seraphor]

Talks about adding a 4th tank to help with the balance but then says cannot add a 4th healer for the sake of the balance.

Yeah I thought that too. You could easily make the same arguments for the other way around, it's just that they had a good idea for a Tank and apparently nothing for a healer so far.
But there is an argument for them possibly being more able to come up with a new healer if the healer balance changes over the next couple years though.

[Syphin_Polaris]

Talks about adding a 4th tank to help with the balance but then says cannot add a 4th healer for the sake of the balance.

Then talks about how there's only 2 ranged melee DPS so they feel they are doing good by adding another ignoring the fact that idk theres a ton of DPS!? Who cares if there's only two melee ranged, it's all under an umbrella.

And of course, their gender locked races ordeal which they try to defend but you can't really defend that nonsense. 1.0 was criticized for this and they did away with this stupid locking with 2.0, but it's like we're reverting back.

I completely disagree with your stance on the races and their explanation regarding them, because it seemed very reasonable to me. Personally when I think of gender and/or race locks, i think of locking specific gameplay behind those. An example would be Tera making reapers or ninjas only playable on the little girls, or brawlers being humans.

That's my thoughts on that matter, but I wanted to ask a question: What else could they add as a new flavor for healing? We have powerful healing and regens from White Mage, we have good healing and high shield related healing from Scholar, and a mix of both worlds with a list of buffs from Astro. Also at the current moment, white mage is a very powerful healer, but thats kinda all they really bring a group, where as scholar can help prevent damage and increase crits against a target and astro has amazing raid utility in the cards. I don't main healers so I don't know all the finer details on what makes an average healer and a great healer so I'm sure I'm missing some other key details. I want to know what they could bring new to the table that isn't regens, shields, and RNGesus blessed cards. I'm genuinely curious.

I'm also sure the players that like ranged physical DPS care about having a 3rd job to play with also, healers have had their 3rd for awhile now.

[Tenil]

I completely disagree with your stance on the races and their explanation regarding them, because it seemed very reasonable to me.

It seems reasonable if you take everything he said as fact. In actuality, though, all races except roegadyn and lalafell share a body - they aren't unique. Even roegadyn share a body with hrothgar now.

Then there's this line: "FFXIV has around ten thousand equippable items already implemented, all of which must be manually modified by our designers". That's a blatant lie. A large number of items share models, and an even larger amount are racially universal, like accessories and weapons.

I'm not suggesting that no or little work goes into new races (even though this game has cut corners massively on races), but I don't appreciate being lied to about it being more work than it is. If the actual amount of work required is too much work, then just say it's too much work.

[PharisHanasaki]

Then there's this line: "FFXIV has around ten thousand equippable items already implemented, all of which must be manually modified by our designers". That's a blatant lie. A large number of items share models, and an even larger amount are racially universal, like accessories and weapons.

Let me explain it to you. The fact that an item can be worn on multiple races, does not mean it is or can be the same item. For each race, each item has to be appropiately set so that it looks good, we have 6 races, so each item has at least 12 different files (one for female, one for male) . Earrings are not in the same spot, whether your a miqote, lala, au ra, roe, etc. Cuz every race has a different shape. So even if say, some items do not need any changes for the new races (which I doubt, given that their heads are completely different, and hrothgars body shape is somewhat different too) you still have to go ahead an review each to make sure it's acceptable.

It is not a lie.
And if you're asking yourself, why is it harder now than back then? Back then was 2 expansions ago, how many more items, jobs, and emotes, have been added since then? Many. They have to review all items made up to this day, plus new ones, which is a very time consuming task.

[LyraKuroneko]

.

A lot of items do share the same models though and are just resized to the needs.

For example : earring seems to at best have 2 models. Else there are moved and resized.

for chest piece it seems to have hyur midlander m, f, roe m, lala m (most of them at least) it is adjusted for the rest of the races. For more difficult attire there is obviously more models but you have the idea.

As the benchmark isn't out I can't tell you if Viera and Rhoth share what piece, or if they reworked them all, obviously. However they did said that all headpieces had to be reworked and that will take time.

[Alucard135]

It seems reasonable if you take everything he said as fact. In actuality, though, all races except roegadyn and lalafell share a body - they aren't unique. Even roegadyn share a body with hrothgar now.

Then there's this line: "FFXIV has around ten thousand equippable items already implemented, all of which must be manually modified by our designers". That's a blatant lie. A large number of items share models, and an even larger amount are racially universal, like accessories and weapons.

I'm not suggesting that no or little work goes into new races (even though this game has cut corners massively on races), but I don't appreciate being lied to about it being more work than it is. If the actual amount of work required is too much work, then just say it's too much work.

Modders would be laughing at you.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Modders would be laughing at you.

Except even a lot of modders can't get gear to not break character models. Even simple edits sometimes screws up displays. I've seen pics of gear straight up deleting bits of character models when looked at from certain angles.