Pronouns?

[Iscah]

Using your first linked quest as an example,

Ahhh! I'm sorry, <If(PlayerParameter(4))>m-m-madam<Else/>s-s-sir</If>! No need to get angry, now! I-I have a problem, all right!? I was working it out with my mummy, and─uh, er, ah...

It's quite literally a template and placeholder system that generates the correct line based off your character's information. Just like any other templating system out there, you can have conditionals and branching which allows for a more "dynamic" text block display, which is what the game already does. Making an adjustment to check for some other character variable would be simple and like all other question dialog, handled completely client-side because the server doesn't care about pronouns. Naturally, the character's gender would still matter for things like equipping gear, but those checks do have to be validated by the server. There's no in-game dialog that checks the gender of your party members to my knowledge.

The plugin itself basically just overrides those local to the client variables and the text payload continues as normal. It'd be a lot more involved to inject something like "they/them" since that's not swapping a conditional if/else, but the general work needed to make these adjustments could be largely automated by the developers, I'd imagine as their scripting system likely allows them to already make those changes without having to hand-touch each one. (Just like how all the quests that mention race magically adjusted to Hrothgar and Viera).

The original script as you quoted it isn't a placeholder - at least not in the way I would understand the term, although I have no experience in programming to know how the terms are normally used. But I would think of a placeholder as needing to fetch something from another external list to insert into the script, which clearly isn't the case - all of the variables are there in the text, unique to that line, and it only needs to check the character parameter to assemble the right version of the script.

We got an unintentional glance at the coding for a race-variable line a while back when the French version stuffed up their code while inserting references for Hrothgar - which was how the name of the race got leaked in the first place. You can see from the screenshot that the French version also has to code their gendered lead-in words into the individual races.

There's no in-game dialog that checks the gender of your party members to my knowledge.

Not dialogue, but lots of emotes have gendered language, and you also have system messages like when someone "casts his/her lot" for loot. If pronoun preferences need to be stored separately to the character's physical sex, they absolutely do need to be transmitted to the server and to everyone else you may interact with.

Making an adjustment to check for some other character variable would be simple

At a simple level of "can you make the dialogue change based on a hypothetical pronoun-gender parameter and not the physical sex parameter", yes. They could do that if the parameter existed.

What they couldn't do is simply find-and-replace every instance where the game currently references sex and change it to gender. We've already covered examples of situations where that couldn't work and the result wouldn't make sense.

So that means at minimum a writer would need to go through every single gendered reference in the entire game and evaluate which is the appropriate parameter to reference. They would have to add new situational lines for a neutral-gendered character in places. And where it is deemed necessary to reference physical sex rather than gender, they would have to ask the question of how someone might react if those two aspects do not match.

(Additionally, because there are so many possible forms that a gendered reference might take, that might actually amount to going through the entire script manually to search out those references in the first place.)

Yeah, in the handful of situations where a voice line DOES actually refer to the player character's gender, we do have an issue there. But there's only a handful of them, and I think this is something that could be handle by letting the player have a fallback to one of the currently implemented choices (male or female pronouns). It's the sort of choice that SE could improve upon going forwards by either avoiding gendered phrases for the player (ex, "a person of your stature" instead of "a woman of your stature" or "a man of your stature"). And that saves them a line of recording.

There isn't really a perfect way to handle the already-recorded things because like plenty of other features that were tacked onto FFXIV, it wasn't a design decision from the start and there's going to be technical bloat. But I don't think that means it cannot be improved for new content.

As others have already touched on, I don't feel like stripping out all possible references to gender is the right way to go about things. Sometimes scripts just need to refer to someone with a pronoun, or it becomes stilted and awkward as you try to dodge it.

Already I'm sure they avoid it whenever they can, to avoid having to double-record lines, but it's still necessary in places.

Big hypothetical if they could add the option to use "they" as your preferred pronoun, you would add a third recording to those situations, not avoid them or only write a single ungendered version.

Would it really be considered removal had they never included it from the beginning? Legit question. If all the voiced cutscenes had only used first/second person pronouns for the player character because they'd been written that way, would you feel as strongly?

I would observe that they are deliberately avoiding pronouns in cutscenes - just like they are already, inescapably, avoiding using your character's name and instead using generics like "my friend" or "the Warrior of Light". I'd chalk the lack of pronouns up to the same necessity of voice recordings, and I'm sure there would be lines that would come off awkwardly because of that approach.

I'm not sure how a script requiring third person pronouns is deemed more respectful to the character than a script that was more neutral, offered neutral options, or avoided the issue altogether. In any case, it's not like I expect SE to bend to my standards or make any changes. I simply proposed a few ways this thread could have been avoided.

Adding a third variable of "they" and removing the need for variables by avoiding all uses of "he/she/they" are two very different approaches but I think you are either conflating them or coming off as proposing one when you actually mean the other.

I'm also not sure how "a script requiring third person pronouns" differs from "a script that offers neutral options" but you seem to be contrasting those things.

A script that continues to use personal pronouns (whatever they are) is going to sound more natural and more personal than one that avoids them for the sake of neutrality. And so long as the only options to pick for your character in FFXIV are "cis male" and "cis female" then they should be addressed by those pronouns.

I can see there's a counter-argument that some people might want to be deliberately ignoring those inevitable gender-references and pretending their character is the other gender, so each mention is jarring, but... it's tricky. And I think it's a loss if we have to minimise gender references because of that scenario.

There's also - correct me if I'm wrong, but to my knowledge, while "they" is an equal substitute to "he/she", we lack the same vocabulary when you get to more varied gender-based wording. When someone politely addresses you as sir/madam, or the old man calls you lad/lass... where does that go if you're trying to avoid gendered terms? They add personality to a character's speech and tells you a bit about them.

In the end, unfortunately, I doubt the likely technical effort involved in retrofitting this notoriously spaghetti-code engine to redo the dialogue system—much less go back and change prior dialogue—is feasible, at least not if we want the dev team to still produce other content. (MOAR CONTENT PLZ)

But I can 100% understand why there are people who would want that done.

That's my impression too. I'm fine with the idea of the option being added, but it just seems to be several levels of complicated and it's unlikely (or maybe impossible from a technical angle, at least within their budget) that they are going to add it. It's something you'd want to build in from the start and consider in the programming and scriptwriting - both the words and the events.

So I don't mind people asking for it, but I do mind them saying "it'd be simple to add".

[Shibi]

A well thought out post Iscah, kudos.

[LineageRazor]

As a programmer who has done work with databases, it's possible - even likely - that what Iscah says is correct. All of the values that determine your character are stored in a database, and it's quite likely that there are no seperate entries in that database for sex and gender. Dialogue options quite likely look to the same value that was set when you selected your character's sex as the determining value when determining dialogue options. That said, it probably would not be a strain on the system to add an additional database entry for gender, after which a simple search could locate all the PlayerParameter(4)'s in the dialogue text and adjust them to utilize the new PlayerParameter(67) (admittedly a bit tricky, since we're replacing a true/false option with three or more choices). It's not impossible to assume that this couldn't be just as easily applied to other players' displays - after all, when your character information is loaded into their systems, it includes all of the appearance values you've chosen, likely utlizing the same server-side database values that you yourself set when you created your character.

A bigger problem arises when it comes to voiced dialogue that includes gender. While male and female pronoun options are already voiced and available, I'd imagine there's no recorded dialogue with they/them pronouns (or whatever other pronouns you prefer). It would be tremendously expensive to hire all those voice actors to record a third option (let alone more than just a third), and in the cases of voice actors who have passed away, impossible unless you were to recast them.

A further problem appears in dealing with strangers or enemies. Livia sas Junius finds you utterly contemptable and doesn't give a damn what your prefered pronouns are. She's going to address you as prince or princess based on your visible gender alone. Less extreme, folks you meet for the first time are likely to assume your gender based on your visible gender until they get to know you. All this changes the viability of a simple search-and-replace - you need to pick and choose which dialogue branches to adjust, and with so much dialogue in the game this is INCREDIBLY diffiuclt. Unless, of course, you decide to throw reality out the window and decide that everyone in the world magically knows and respects your preferred pronouns without being told - and, perhaps, some LBGTQ folks might be perfectly satisfied with this. It IS a fantasy, after all!

So, to answer the original poster, is such an option available at this time? No.

To address the majority of the thread, is such an option possible? Yes. Is it economically feasible? Possibly, depending on how picky you are. The change is likely not difficult if you're willing to ignore the voiced text, and don't mind total strangers magically knowing your gender identity. Is it likely to happen? Probably not.

[tdb]

Unless, of course, you decide to throw reality out the window and decide that everyone in the world magically knows and respects your preferred pronouns without being told - and, perhaps, some LBGTQ folks might be perfectly satisfied with this.

Based on how some trans people behave in the real world ("how dare you assume I'm male/female just because I look like one"), I bet they'd be delighted if it was possible to magically know someone's preferred pronouns.

[wereotter]

A further problem appears in dealing with strangers or enemies. Livia sas Junius finds you utterly contemptable and doesn't give a damn what your prefered pronouns are. She's going to address you as prince or princess based on your visible gender alone. Less extreme, folks you meet for the first time are likely to assume your gender based on your visible gender until they get to know you. All this changes the viability of a simple search-and-replace - you need to pick and choose which dialogue branches to adjust, and with so much dialogue in the game this is INCREDIBLY diffiuclt. Unless, of course, you decide to throw reality out the window and decide that everyone in the world magically knows and respects your preferred pronouns without being told - and, perhaps, some LBGTQ folks might be perfectly satisfied with this. It IS a fantasy, after all!

I'm going to counter this argument with the concept that we see some players are doing, which is to play with the character creator to make the viera character model look like a male character, some going to far as to also include in their normal glamor the santa beard or false mustache to try to sell the idea of facial hair for their viera, and additionally will wear clothing that intentionally minimizes the breasts and goes as far as possible to try to make that character LOOK male, yet because the person is flagged as female by the game, a bunch of titles will be something like "Lady Protector" instead of "Lord Protector" in addition to all the NPC characters referring to the character as "her" when the character looks male. So it serves as a counter, would Livia call you princess if you've set up your "female" character to look male?

This is just all the more reason that, especially they're not going to create the countersexes to these races, to support just letting the player change a flag from M to F or F to M. Adding any other pronouns definitely would be more complicated requiring more dialogue to be written and issues with voiced cuscenes that use she/he pronouns. But simply overriding the system to say that you want it to use the opposite pronouns isn't an unrealistic request for those who would want it.

[TheMightyMollusk]

People are also trying to make their Viera look more masculine because they can't play an actual male Viera, so I feel like that isn't the best example you could've chosen.

[Iscah]

This is just all the more reason that, especially they're not going to create the countersexes to these races, to support just letting the player change a flag from M to F or F to M. Adding any other pronouns definitely would be more complicated requiring more dialogue to be written and issues with voiced cuscenes that use she/he pronouns. But simply overriding the system to say that you want it to use the opposite pronouns isn't an unrealistic request for those who would want it.

There is no separate flag for pronouns.

There is nothing there to "let the player change" except the character's physical sex.

[MariaArvana]

I'm going to counter this argument with the concept that we see some players are doing, which is to play with the character creator to make the viera character model look like a male character, some going to far as to also include in their normal glamor the santa beard or false mustache to try to sell the idea of facial hair for their viera, and additionally will wear clothing that intentionally minimizes the breasts and goes as far as possible to try to make that character LOOK male, yet because the person is flagged as female by the game, a bunch of titles will be something like "Lady Protector" instead of "Lord Protector" in addition to all the NPC characters referring to the character as "her" when the character looks male. So it serves as a counter, would Livia call you princess if you've set up your "female" character to look male?

This is just all the more reason that, especially they're not going to create the countersexes to these races, to support just letting the player change a flag from M to F or F to M. Adding any other pronouns definitely would be more complicated requiring more dialogue to be written and issues with voiced cuscenes that use she/he pronouns. But simply overriding the system to say that you want it to use the opposite pronouns isn't an unrealistic request for those who would want it.

Viera isn't the best example here, since even in-lore, no matter how masculine & fake-mustache looking your character is, you'd have a 99% chance of being right if you called any viera you saw a she. Since the lore of Viera states the males are insanely rare (to the point of being mythical) and basically hide away for the vast majority of their lives. Meaning any character in-game with even the most basic idea of Viera traditions would be extremely dis-positioned to call them she/her/etc.

A better example would be lalafell, which you can make extremely similar to the other gender with very little effort due to the way their race works and lack of physical, easily discernible male/female characteristics on...certain fronts.

[wereotter]

People are also trying to make their Viera look more masculine because they can't play an actual male Viera, so I feel like that isn't the best example you could've chosen.

That's actually the exact reason I picked that example. People are trying to get as close to playing a male viera as possible within the game's limitations, but doing so makes it even more limited than playing a female one. You're locked out of many titles, a lot of clothing items that would be slacks on men turn into mini skirts, and even if you decide all of that's acceptable, all the NPCs will still call you she/her.

Viera isn't the best example here, since even in-lore, no matter how masculine & fake-mustache looking your character is, you'd have a 99% chance of being right if you called any viera you saw a she. Since the lore of Viera states the males are insanely rare (to the point of being mythical) and basically hide away for the vast majority of their lives. Meaning any character in-game with even the most basic idea of Viera traditions would be extremely dis-positioned to call them she/her/etc.

A better example would be lalafell, which you can make extremely similar to the other gender with very little effort due to the way their race works and lack of physical, easily discernible male/female characteristics on...certain fronts.

This would depend on the sexual dimorphism in the race. Even though male miquote are equally rare, people have no trouble telling the difference between the men and the women.

[MariaArvana]

This would depend on the sexual dimorphism in the race. Even though male miquote are equally rare, people have no trouble telling the difference between the men and the women.

Well, there's a reason I mentioned (to the point of being mythical). The Wandering Draumaturge mentions due to their nature of remaining reclusive and remaining in the shadows their whole lives except for very short times every 3-5 years, there's basically no documentation on what male viera look like in the world of Hydaelyn, because no one has ever seen one outside of the Viera themselves.

Male Miqo'te may be rare, but male Viera are literally the bigfoots/loch-ness monsters of Hydaelyn in terms of rarity, male Miqo'te have nothing on them. So yes, anyone who sees a viera at all and knows even the basic understanding of their culture will auto-assume they're female, because the odds there's a male one in front of them is basically winning the metaphorical lottery.