Letter from the Producer LXII

[Dustytome]

the character team took it upon themselves to use their spare moments to make it possible—without telling me. More than five hundred and forty such items were carefully modified by our designers so that all would display correctly with our new face models. /salute

/salute indeed. Someone needs to send them a pile of cookies shaped like rabbits with fancy frosted hats.

[Shougun]

/salute indeed. Someone needs to send them a pile of cookies shaped like rabbits with fancy frosted hats.

I'm impressed with their independence, I've never led anything aaaaannnywhere near that scale (for me it was like 6 people tops lol) so it's not that good of a comparison but... some days it was like trying to help a thirsty horse find the water in front of their nose .

I can think of a few items for FFXIV that just came to be because of passion outside of what they were told to do, that's nice as it means it's not just a job to them it's something they care for! Happens in other companies too but it's a great thing to see, especially vs some soul devouring environment lol.

Good team .

[NessaWyvern]

The devs that secretly did the headgear for Hrothgar and Viera secretly in their own time are true MVPs.
I am no longer crying in 4-eyes

[Jaywalker]

Huge applause for Yoshida and the devs who decided to develop headgear on their own, incredibly admirable on their part. I wouldn't be shocked if gender unlocking happened down the line but unsurprisingly it sounds like a massive amount of work. They know there's desire for it, best way to encourage the option at this point is to help with resources by putting money toward Shadowbringers. If they do it, it'll be in a reasonable amount of time with a reasonable amount of resources at their disposal. Not promising seems very fair too, but again just acknowledging the desire is a good thing imo.

[Noodle_Trinidad]

Ah, yes. As you may remember from the Tokyo Fan Festival keynote, I mentioned that due to the special design of the Hrothgar and Viera heads, equipped headgear would not display.

Glasses and so forth would not display either at first, but after seeing how many people called for us to do something, anything, to address this after the announcement, the character team took it upon themselves to use their spare moments to make it possible—without telling me. More than five hundred and forty such items were carefully modified by our designers so that all would display correctly with our new face models. /salute

I know I'll probably get hate for this but this sounds like a result of lowering our expectations pretty low with the "Don't expect much in terms of headgear" on launch to make making around 1/3rd of gear seem praise worthy. I have no reason to praise this at all, shouldn't the completion of said race in terms of all its visual assets including the armor it'll wear not be expected as a standard? Especially from an MMO made by a AAA devteam? This is the part that is baffling me the most, to the point that I now question why they did not just hold off on either Hrothgar or Viera for one more expansion and just make the Male/Females of one if the "Headgear" was such an issue. They'd probably get more praise in that regard while still playing up that "possibly the last race" card.

As for the rest regarding the genderlocks I really can't say I'm surprised but given Yoshida's pattern of marketing and wording things he'll be saving this for the next expansion to generate more applause and praise out of something that people thought "wasn't possibly coming".

I'm already assuming many people will start to "Appeal to Authority" with their many rebuttals of "Where are your credentials" or "Modeling background" but think about this clearly. If this was the case for WoW or any other MMO that XIV competes with would you be praising them if they said "Oh we'll have a 1/3rd of some visual gear work for this new race by launch"? or would you logically question why a MMO standard isn't being met? Why is FFXIV given a free pass in this regard?

[xbahax92]

I'm already assuming many people will start to "Appeal to Authority" with their many rebuttals of "Where are your credentials" or "Modeling background" but think about this clearly. If this was the case for WoW or any other MMO that XIV competes with would you be praising them if they said "Oh we'll have a 1/3rd of some visual gear work for this new race by launch"? or would you logically question why a MMO standard isn't being met? Why is FFXIV given a free pass in this regard?

The appeal isnt th 1/3 headgear though. Its the extra effort they did in their own limited time and that without Yoshida knowing. In fact, it shows devs are still trying their best and try to push themselves. They're not a big team to begin with, so its not wrong giving them credit once in a while.

[Noodle_Trinidad]

The appeal isnt th 1/3 headgear though. Its the extra effort they did in their own limited time and that without Yoshida knowing. In fact, it shows devs are still trying their best and try to push themselves. They're not a big team to begin with, so its not wrong giving them credit once in a while.

I'm sorry but I will have to heavily disagree with giving them praise in any regards if they can't even meet the bare minimum of the MMO standard. Were they owned by a Med Sized Developer or an actual Indie team that somehow is pushing out AAA quality on an MMO then yes I would praise them but the reality is that they're not. I will not praise subpar standards from a AAA dev.

I will not stop you from praising them as this is your view though, if you feel they deserve it then more power to you but I have made my stance clear.

I dont think there is anything wrong with wanting, it's like easily half or more of my posts....lol super kettle if I did Haha but I would say the reason they get a pass / praise from me is because I believe them. In that I mean I believe they had this headgear issue and some people having been working hard/er/ to make it so and that they succeded, and further I believe they weren't all sitting in the office before that twirling sticks lol (was a push on top of the march).



So in that I'm excited / praise, of course that doesn't change I might have some desires later or think it's reasonable others want more headgear as is possible on top of whatever has been done. I suppose if they burnt the bridges of good will I have then maybe I would be more pessimistic but I'm not there.

By all means keep your reasoning and continue supporting them if that is how you feel just in my own experience in games the way this Dev Team interacts with the community is subpar when compared to other Dev Teams and games I play. Still I will respect your position to praise them for it and believing in them even if I don't.

[Shougun]

By all means keep your reasoning and continue supporting them if that is how you feel just in my own experience in games the way this Dev Team interacts with the community is subpar, in my own experience at least, when compared to other Dev Teams and games I play. Still I will respect your position to praise them for it and believing in them even if I don't.

Fair response (Only responding to the part directed to me). I think part of the communication difference from what we may normally expect is the whole Japanese/English divide, but that said I do wish we could hear and interact more in some way. Maybe they need more devs that speak English comfortably enough to interface or give our CMs more power, not sure. While wonderful I can imagine whoever gets that job will also get loads of stress and flak though, as is the nature of the internet lol, so hope those that enter are prepared XD.

I do feel feedback is worth it though, I've seen a number of things go in that I feel are unlikely to have been purely coincidental (some could have been).

In other news, I may be finally using one of my ancient dusty fantasia (still have all my freebies lol). Will be quite something to get the benchmark and see how that goes.

[Physic]

I'm sorry but I will have to heavily disagree with giving them praise in any regards if they can't even meet the bare minimum of the MMO standard. Were they owned by a Med Sized Developer or an actual Indie team that somehow is pushing out AAA quality on an MMO then yes I would praise them but the reality is that they're not. I will not praise subpar standards from a AAA dev.

I will not stop you from praising them as this is your view though, if you feel they deserve it then more power to you but I have made my stance clear.



By all means keep your reasoning and continue supporting them if that is how you feel just in my own experience in games the way this Dev Team interacts with the community is subpar when compared to other Dev Teams and games I play. Still I will respect your position to praise them for it and believing in them even if I don't.

exactly what par are you comparing it to? most AAA games dont even have 6 races. Also Every decision has a cost, in time/money/effort the question is, is the effort of making more hats worth it in man hours, compared to whatever else you have to do?

as for budget, its not limitless, you will still have to make decisions based on the economy of creation.

[Berethos]

I'm sorry but I will have to heavily disagree with giving them praise in any regards if they can't even meet the bare minimum of the MMO standard.

You think WoW is manually modifying 10k gear assets when they introduce a new race? The devs that only recently started incorporating 3D elements into gear that for years was just painted on textures that stretches (sometimes horribly so) to fit whatever race was wearing it (most recently chest pieces and legs. and a few years ago it was belts)?

That hasn't gone back and updated the horribly pixelated gear from early in the game's life?

And they manage to not do gear to the same quality level AND lack the consistent cadence this game has.

Or maybe we should consider GW2 who...oh wait, they've never actually added a new race. Oops.

I think you've severely overestimated what other MMOs are doing with their gear model work.