Letter from the Producer LXII

[Halivel]

But you have cuter males already with miqo-te, elezen, Au ra all you are requesting you already have I can understand you or your friend want to play male viera and motive is indifferent in game because its not that I will play it but I agree the more diversity in game the better.

To add diversity doesn't imply a use of the same models would be more interesting in game concept perspective to do something from the scratch, since for males you already have Roes and Hrothgar for that difference.

Elezens and Au Ra aren't really "cute", imo (sorry, but Au Ra males have eternal "stone-macho-face", it's not cute at all). But if males have at least some options (Miqo'te, mainly, and even with them there are places for argue mostly because they aren't really elegant), those who wanted beast-looking females got nothing. They received another waifus, as if we didn't have tones of them already (upd, just to clarify: I like how female Vieras look, but... c'mon...).

[Insertcoins]

Elezens and Au Ra aren't really "cute", imo (sorry, but Au Ra males have eternal "stone-macho-face", it's not cute at all). But if males have at least some options (Miqo'te, mainly, and even with them there are places for argue mostly because they aren't really elegant), those who wanted beast-looking females got nothing. They received another waifus, as if we didn't have tones of them already (upd, just to clarify: I like how female Vieras look, but... c'mon...).

I think what everyone is missing is that the Viera males would've been JUST like those choices tho. So noone would've been happy either way. " Why you make them like Elezens? " why do I say this? Cause YP already said thats how he'll make them and noone is honoring that. THey keep asking for options Yoshi is never going to make. Like child PCs.

[Alleo]

What you're saying makes sense for the restaurant, since the main reason your going to it is to eat those dishes. But it doesn't for FFXIV case since the new races aren't the main reason people are going to play the expansion. That's the core difference between the two cases.

Maybe its not the main reason for most of us but it can be a big enough reason for someone that is already on the fence about the new expansion. Characters and how they look are a big part of the game, I mean we even joke about glamour being the true endgame and we have lots of glamour in the cash shop because they know it will sell. Race is another part of that and depending on how you play the game (creating your own characters story and more) it will be a big impact.

So one could say: You went to the restaurant in the past but they changed their sortiment and now you barely have any reason to still like it. Then they announce two new dishes and because they have offered such dishes in the past with different ways to cook them you believe that this is happening there too, go there and then find out that its not the case with those two. Disappointed you now realize that you have nothing that greatly left to visit the restaurant since you need to pay money to reach it. Now you might descide to either never visit it again or just go there from time to time to save money.

For me this makes perfect sense. Races are one point of the game, if they would be worth nothing then why would they introduce new ones anyway? So if you are already on the fence or dreamed about being that race for a long time, this decision can very well make you drop the game or just sub barely anymore to get to see the rest you still like (like story for example).

[zeylos]

You seem so happy about that number. Do you think everyone who clicked a like wants to be a bunny boi? Do you think that Female Hrothgar are also popular? They have 1164 likes ... but wait, you say no one wanted a beast race.

Also it's not a paradox, people are more likely to speak up in protest against something (in this case monogender races). Does not mean they themselves are interested in becoming that race or gender. It's easy AF to say "That would be cool/ I'd like to see that in game/ this doesn't seem fair!" without wanting to roll that thing. I'd LOVE for Namazu to be a race ... I'd never play one so I'd gain nothing from their inclusion nor does it bother me that it's never gonna happen but I'd "like" a Namazu support topic and say "This would be cool".





That poll is 6 years old ( back then the game was much MUCH smaller than it is now)
It's outdated and doesn't represent the current player base.

Also there's the fact that, ya know, they credit interest in a playable beast race to people's response to Lupin.

The point is, there is a huge amount of ppl who want male Viera. There is a huge amount of ppl who want female hrotgar, and we have literally no idea on what a majority is since this forums are about 3-5% of the playerbase. If no Viera was added, no one would be complaining about no male Viera, and if no hrotgar was added, no one would be complaining about no female hrotgar. Regardless of what they did, it was going to get some backlash, but what they did was the worst possible option in terms of backlash and press, considering if they stuck to wht they wanted to do and did only full hrotgar, there would have been drama for 1 month and done. There will be drama about gender lock until the end of the game

[Kaedan]

The point is, there is a huge amount of ppl who want male Viera. There is a huge amount of ppl who want female hrotgar, and we have literally no idea on what a majority is since this forums are about 3-5% of the playerbase. If no Viera was added, no one would be complaining about no male Viera, and if no hrotgar was added, no one would be complaining about no female hrotgar. Regardless of what they did, it was going to get some backlash, but what they did was the worst possible option in terms of backlash and press, considering if they stuck to wht they wanted to do and did only full hrotgar, there would have been drama for 1 month and done. There will be drama about gender lock until the end of the game

You're forgetting the other side of that equation:

If no Viera were added, you would have people complaining about no male Viera, you would have a rabid swarm of people complaining about no Viera at all.
Conversely, if no Hrothgar were added, you wouldn't have people complaining about no female Hrothgar, you would have the same rabid swarm of people complaining about "oh, another human with animal ears attached".

Face it, they took the path of least resistance that would satisfy the most amount of people they could. As a company, their bottom line is money, so you can be VERY sure that they did the proper research to find which would satisfy the most people.

[reivaxe]

The point is, there is a huge amount of ppl who want male Viera. There is a huge amount of ppl who want female hrotgar, and we have literally no idea on what a majority is since this forums are about 3-5% of the playerbase. If no Viera was added, no one would be complaining about no male Viera, and if no hrotgar was added, no one would be complaining about no female hrotgar. Regardless of what they did, it was going to get some backlash, but what they did was the worst possible option in terms of backlash and press, considering if they stuck to wht they wanted to do and did only full hrotgar, there would have been drama for 1 month and done. There will be drama about gender lock until the end of the game

Oh yes, the <10 who spam the male Viera thread sure show me this huge number lol

And yeah, this forum is small ... maybe try looking at more places yourself to see better what people want? I visit a number of popular sites to discuss FF14 and the ENGLISH side of this forum is the only one that's this hung up on Viera Male.

And no, just no. This is the best route to pleasing the most people with the final addition to this game.

[Alleo]

Oh yes, the <10 who spam the male Viera thread sure show me this huge number lol

And yeah, this forum is small ... maybe try looking at more places yourself to see better what people want? I visit a number of popular sites to discuss FF14 and the ENGLISH side of this forum is the only one that's this hung up on Viera Male.

And no, just no. This is the best route to pleasing the most people with the final addition to this game.

So the biggest like thread on this forum is no indication of wanting male viera (and no its not just 10 people spamming it, there has been even new people only logging into the forum to post about their support) but somehow its the truth for beast races? Why is one side allowed to be counted but the other side does not count?

In the end the most talk about a beastly race started with the Lupins and yet even that paled to the discussion about Vieras.

[reivaxe]

Lol then the <3 who spammed beast race are also a huge number lol

What are you talking about?

So the biggest like thread on this forum is no indication of wanting male viera (and no its not just 10 people spamming it, there has been even new people only logging into the forum to post about their support) but somehow its the truth for beast races? Why is one side allowed to be counted but the other side does not count?

In the end the most talk about a beastly race started with the Lupins and yet even that paled to the discussion about Vieras.

No, I think that the likes are more so people voting against "genderlocking" than supporting an addition because they personally plan to play it or even like it. Explains why it has so many more likes than the reg old Viera support thread and why Female Hrothgar are so close to it in numbers. Are you saying Female Hrothgar are "highly wanted" as well as a way to say that a large number of people would play as them? Or when you say "Wanting" do you mean people just want the option to inevitably ignore it?

Do you think someone saying "I'd like to see some buff cat ladies and bunny bois!/ Genderlocking is so outdated!" means they themselves want to potion change into one?

And yes ... the male Viera thread's life blood are just a few obsessed posters spamming. Recently the only time it slipped off the front page is when those posters took a break for a few days. Logging in and plopping a single "I support this!" post and leaving is not why that thread is so stupidly long. And yes, I say stupidly long when I can pick a random page and see that 80% of post on it are from 1-2 people spamming replies to keep the thread bumped.

(Also, "beast race" was a common request not just for Lupin. Ronso and Burmecian and so on commonly showed up though it really did kick off with Lupin seeing as they're in game and look very humanoid. Explains why Ronso is a head option as well as the wolf like head, they want to cover as much ground as they can when naturally a race wouldn't have such extremely different heads. )


This is a good write up for the situation..

Here's the problem with the number of likes. That number had a sharp increase to 1400 in 4 days. But that number only increased to 1666 in a span of 7 weeks after that initial increase. Where do you think the initial influx came from? It was from those that were watching the live letter and those that were told about the thread after. So the main question becomes "how many actually saw that announcement, heard about the thread and didn't bother to like it?". That's the actual pool size that the number of likes must be compared to. And that number exceeded 48K (that's only if you count the EN and JP twitch views for Tokyo live letter, let alone the number of players that didn't watch it).

If you were now to calculate the percentage of players that posted their like on the mega thread, that's 3.4% only. The reason many thought that 1666 likes is a big number to show profitable demand for SE was because they thought the number of likes was huge but they fell to what's called "non response bias" in their calculations.

And then we have the google poll that was done. That also falls into the same issue of "those that didn't participate in it, already should be counted as neutral". Hence the "non response bias" again. And it also has the issue that some can vote multiple times and even non players can vote. So that skewed the results drastically.

[White_Wolf_X]

Really hope they add Male Viera and female Hrothgar in a later patch in shadowbringers.

Also "FFXIV has around ten thousand equippable items" .. now could just be me but that number seems abit high.

[Halivel]

Also "FFXIV has around ten thousand equippable items" .. now could just be me but that number seems abit high.

Well... how to say. If we open "armor" section in official database, it has 8326 items. Plus 2594 in accessories. Plus 3072 in arms. Plus 650 in tools. Yes, you don't need to adjust all of them, but you will need to check that there are no any glitches anyway, so it's a lot of work.