Letter from the Producer LXII

[Fal_Kearst]

I do find there gender races decision very odd. trying to please everybody and instead pleased no one

I was surprised and pleased with the announcement of Hrothgar.

[WaterShield]

I do find there gender races decision very odd. trying to please everybody and instead pleased no one

I'm pleased

So you can't say no one was pleased

[Bongaboi]

I do find there gender races decision very odd. trying to please everybody and instead pleased no one

It sure pleased me, but I have no intention of changing faces. Hyur midlander female all the way.

[Enla]

Shout out to the asset artists who went through and worked on so many meshes and textures to provide proper helm/hat support for Viera and Hrothgar! And all without telling Yoshi-P at that! That's how you know the developers of this game love what they're working on.

[Alucard135]

1. The Cost of Developing a New Playable Race
In a Fan Festival keynote speech, I stated that this will likely be the last time we add new playable races to FFXIV. To put it simply, a tremendous amount of time and resources are required to develop one. I’m sure you all understand that a new race will require new faces, hairstyles, bodies, and other assets. In addition to this, they need to be capable of equipping all existing items—this alone requires a massive commitment of resources. Each race has a unique frame and body type, and so every piece of visible equipment needs to be carefully adjusted to display properly on Hrothgar and Viera models. A cursory search will show that FFXIV has around ten thousand equippable items already implemented, all of which must be manually modified by our designers. This is an immediate and unavoidable development cost incurred when adding a new race.

The addition of new playable races will impact more than the development cost of the items added in 5.1 and subsequent updates. Not only will we be transitioning from twelve variations (six races, two genders each) to fourteen, but we will also need to commit more resources to the development of new emotes. While FFXIV will continue to strive to maintain a regular 3.5 month major update cycle, we must also ensure that sufficient time is secured for the meticulous development of new content—or else the quality will invariably drop. This is a complex problem that can’t be solved simply by throwing more money or people at it, as it impacts both debugging and QA.

In summary, these are the circumstances which informed my previous statement that this is likely to be the last time we add new playable races; as at this point in time, it is difficult to see us maintaining our patch update schedule if we have to account for more than seven races and two genders (technically six races with two genders and two races with a single gender, but this is the functional equivalent).
2. A Significant Number of Players Have Been Requesting Playable Viera
Since this may be the last time we add new races, we spent a long time deliberating which race would be the best addition. Fans worldwide have shown an overwhelming desire for FFXII’s Viera, and we have long been aware of this fact. In fact, we considered adding Viera back in Heavensward, but eventually decided that, since that was FFXIV’s first expansion, we should instead add an all-new original race—the Au Ra. If we were to add yet another race rather than the Viera, we anticipated that many fans would be disappointed, and so we decided to try and satisfy their request in this expansion. The desire to please our fans is the primary reason behind this decision.
3. Providing a More Beastly Variety for FFXIV Character Creation and World Building
After seeing the positive reception of the Lupin characters we introduced in Stormblood, we concluded that, for the long-term health of FFXIV, it was important to implement a greater variety of character types beyond the traditionally beautiful in a future expansion. In truth, we had considered adding more beastly characters long before, and since this was possibly our last chance to do so, we decided that we should—much like we did with the Viera—in the interests of expanding the lore and the choices available to players.

The same reasons that some have been saying over and over here and yet, they were labeled sexists and homophobes.

[Vnolan]

3.The Present Balance Between Tanks and Healers
Since we currently have four melee DPS jobs, we decided to hold off on developing another and instead added a new tank.

Tanks in FFXIV are often utilized in either a main tank or off-tank role. However, we currently have an odd number of tank jobs, and we felt it that it would be easier to balance them moving forward if we had an even number of tanks, which is why we went with gunbreaker in the end.

Moreover, ever since we added astrologian with Heavensward, we have had considerable difficulty in balancing it along with white mage and scholar. Rather than exacerbate a complex situation by adding a fourth healer to the mix, we decided to instead prioritize balancing the three existing healer jobs at this time.

May 2017

Q: We'd like to hear any stories about the selection and development of red mage and samurai!
A: Red mage was announced first, but during the development we chose samurai first. In terms of roles, we thought it would be more important to focus on balancing the existing tanks and healers; therefore, we decided to go with melee DPS for the STR slot, and ranged magic DPS for the INT slot.

[Vanitas]

That is one fresh looking hrothgar.

[Alucard135]

That is one fresh looking hrothgar.

Kudos to them on that lol. It does give a new look to the game.

[reivaxe]

Good read and it sums up everything I've been saying for some time now.

The addition of races takes an extreme amount of commitment and its not just the development of them but also supporting them moving forward.

I think they misunderstood what the actual request was. It was a greater option of "cuter" males to choose from, since Lalafell and to a degree male Miqo'te are the only real options. Basically, a reverse sexual dimorphism from Au ra.
.

From what I've seen there's definitely a faction of male Viera fans asking for shota males. It's also one of the few things from the Japanese side of this forum that I read on their topic for the missing genders. I didn't read much on it but there was def people bringing up shota body types and others telling them NO

[MPK]

I'm so glad he addressed the under-aged ERPing. I really do hope they start cracking down on the people who are ERPing as young people.