Pronouns?

[reiichi]

From what I remember seeing of raw script, it's something along the lines of "if character is X, display text 'xxxxx'", and as I've been saying it's not just a matter of dropping in a single word in the right place bacuse there are so many different forms of gendered words or sentences.

It's not a matter of dropping in an external placeholder to determine whether Thancred tells you he's "quite taken with you" or simply "somewhat in awe". It's not placeholder text that determines how Magnai and Daidukul react to you. It's specific text at that place in the script which must check your character's gender and display the appropriate set of text boxes, but it's not just dropping pronouns alone into a generic script.

I can only imagine this "third party plug-in for custom preferences" had to do a lot of work to set up a custom system. It also presumably stores that information locally, and doesn't transmit it to other users, but if you want others to see your custom pronouns then that information has to be carried along with your character to every other person who sees you on their screen.

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).

[Ammokkx]

Using your first linked quest as an example,


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).

You're still missing the voice acting problem.

It's not quite as easy to hire voice actors to go back and record every piece of gendered dialogue for a third or further option.

[reiichi]

You're still missing the voice acting problem.

It's not quite as easy to hire voice actors to go back and record every piece of gendered dialogue for a third or further option.

Given the game's aversion to already voicing cutscenes in general, even fewer with the player being referenced beyond things like "you" or "yours," I don't think they'd have to really make adjustments. Or they could simply start with asking a player to pick whether they'd prefer their character be referred to with masculine or feminine words that could be adjusted just like cutscene languages. The game's scripting engine already knows how to select the right dialog options based on character variables, and while that wouldn't work well for someone who's not on the binary spectrum, it'd certainly be better than nothing at all.

For text-only dialog options though, as I've mentioned in prior posts, these changes are incredibly easy to adjust for and it likely wouldn't involve particular work to include something like they/them style pronouns instead of he/him or she/hers and let a player set in the client which set they'd prefer.

[Mavrias]

You're still missing the voice acting problem.

It's not quite as easy to hire voice actors to go back and record every piece of gendered dialogue for a third or further option.

I'm still trying to remember the last time I saw a voice acted cutscene where anyone referred to my character as anything other than "my friend" or "warrior of light" or something similar. I can't recall hearing "she" or "her." I've seen it in text obviously, but never said out loud.

[Ammokkx]

I'm still trying to remember the last time I saw a voice acted cutscene where anyone referred to my character as anything other than "my friend" or "warrior of light" or something similar. I can't recall hearing "she" or "her." I've seen it in text obviously, but never said out loud.

Cutscene right before you confront Vauthry, Exarch talks about his friend. About things he would like to do with he/she. Admittedly I only readily have this by hand because I just got done with that particular part of the story, but trust me on this when I say there are far more examples than just this.

[Mavrias]

Cutscene right before you confront Vauthry, Exarch talks about his friend. About things he would like to do with he/she. Admittedly I only readily have this by hand because I just got done with that particular part of the story, but trust me on this when I say there are far more examples than just this.

I stand corrected, although I will point out, that that's a scene where the gender neutral pronoun "they" would fit quite nicely. For the next MMO, perhaps.

[reiichi]

Cutscene right before you confront Vauthry, Exarch talks about his friend. About things he would like to do with he/she. Admittedly I only readily have this by hand because I just got done with that particular part of the story, but trust me on this when I say there are far more examples than just this.

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.

[SturmChurro]

I stand corrected, although I will point out, that that's a scene where the gender neutral pronoun "they" would fit quite nicely. For the next MMO, perhaps.

Just off the top of my head from last night. One example.

https://youtu.be/xHdQgaBKIKg?t=1114

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.

No, I actually like my character being referred to as their proper gender, and would rather not have voice lines diluted for this purpose. It's not a "design choice" at all either to refer to someone as their sex.

[reiichi]

Just off the top of my head from last night. One example.

https://youtu.be/xHdQgaBKIKg?t=1114


No, I actually like my character being referred to as their proper gender, and would rather not have voice lines diluted for this purpose. It's not a "design choice" at all either to refer to someone as their sex.

I'm not sure how people's desire for MORE options means it's going to be taken away from you? Quite literally every line of dialog in the game, including those that have the character's pronouns, are a design choice. FFXIV could have gone the way of older games that only referred to the player character as "you" and never addressed their gender (because sex is biology and I'm pretty sure we're not trying to call people things based off unrendered sexy bits). Does it mean some scenes would have had a different impact? Maybe. But we're not rendering every single line that refers to the player character already because that also just doesn't happen in speech.

Gonna be real with you chief, I'd rather you kept the "she" there. It added a lot more emotional punch to his speech than if he'd just said "they" which, by the way, a lot of people still go "isn't that plural?" when they hear or read it. A lot of people are more used to directed he/she's and would think the dialogue is weird if everything was aimed in third person.

I could see the argument for recording more voice lines for different options, but cutting back on them seems like the opposite of a good idea.

Like I said to the other person, some of these scenes could be affected by making things more ambiguous, but I'm also certain they ALL could have been written in such a way to avoid the player character's gender if that's what the scriptwriters felt like doing. By the way though, third-person pronouns are "he, his, she, hers, they, them, etc." So the proposed change going forwards that I had demonstrated was actually getting away from third-person pronouns.

--

Ultimately, I, as a cisgendered person, already have the game catering to my preference choices. while I don't expect SE to go back and "fix" things to be more inclusive, this isn't a technical limitation of the game so much as a choice by the people writing the game's dialog and the people who voice the lines. I think SE could make things more inclusive for the players who do want to have those choices in future games (or ideally, future content in this game), but I don't really have a horse in this race myself.

[Ammokkx]

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.

Gonna be real with you chief, I'd rather you kept the "she" there. It added a lot more emotional punch to his speech than if he'd just said "they" which, by the way, a lot of people still go "isn't that plural?" when they hear or read it. A lot of people are more used to directed he/she's and would think the dialogue is weird if everything was aimed in third person.

I could see the argument for recording more voice lines for different options, but cutting back on them seems like the opposite of a good idea.