The New Sage Icon, Thoughts?

[NorthernLadMSP]

The original was much better looking. What a ridiculous change.

[Theodric]

To further expand on the relevant posts made by Lauront and a few other posters, there is also the likes of Legend of Dragoon, which killed off a playable character. To say nothing of the Yakuza series which, although full of humour in side quests, tends to have a lot of death and betrayal within the main storylines of each game. There's a great many JRPG's with serious storylines and high stakes, some of which also have the 'power of friendship' in play as a trope but still manage to pull it off without eye roll worthy melodrama and a lack of meaningful consequences. Solely having the antagonists endure consequences does not make for a compelling story in the eyes of many.

Of course, there's many other examples that one could give. There's also the Shadow Hearts games which have an intriguing combination of humour and horror and also kill off playable characters.

[Lauront]

If it makes you feel better, here is a thread by someone who is afraid of whales and wants to be able to change the display of other people's mounts. It's from 2018 and that function hasn't been implemented, but they have added another whale mount since then.

Interesting - maybe we should do something similar for fear of sharp objects - or maybe not, in case it actually is acted upon...

[Dreamsoap]

Outside of the phobia, I think the new design just looks way better. But I really love this suggestion too, imo something about it makes it feel a lot more thematic with the other job symbols. I think there's something to be said for 'readability' too which is why I prefer the new iteration and this suggestion. Icons tend to be quite small so simple, distinct and obvious is better. Too many tiny holes can needlessly complicate.

[Crushnight]

To say nothing of the fact that some people may simply prefer the old design to the new one.

For healer design in any fashion don't bother, they only care about the new rather than the old.

Ast design when asked to consider reverting back to the old card design

"What about those that like it now"

Well what about those that liked it before and didn't ask for the sweeping changes to the job

Crickets

This icon is no different some people prefer the new one so it'll stay regardless whether or not you like the old one and yes I actually liked the old one better but I gave up trying get the devs to revert any decision they make long ago if it ain't a booty booty butt cheeks it ain't worth it to them. >_>

[Lolli282]

Honestly I don’t really care either way, it’s not like it’ll affect gameplay or anything. Nice of the game team to do it.

[Yencat]

Personally, I made it clear from the outset I don't really care about the icon much in and of itself. I never liked the original icon and it continues, unfortunately, to look bad to me.

However, there's more than a few here who doubt that this phobia (and it is debatable if it is one in the usual sense) would be triggered to the degree claimed by that icon; I certainly consider that claim to be dubious, as someone who actually experiences this sense of disgust – that is, when the imagery is actually up to the task to "trigger" it. If some want to adopt the rather typical stance of "you don't get to judge how someone is affected by a phobia or isn't", let's apply that consistently and give the other ones, like aichmophobia a fair shot. Not that I’d want that affecting game design, but you know…

Also, I don't think anyone advocating for them to listen to player requests has ever made the argument they should entertain each and every one. They are aware of the fact that they're making competing demands on the devs. Out of that process, there will be winners and losers, and mostly arguments arise over competing visions for the game and uses of resources. We know this from how the design of male Viera turned out, for example. At a certain point, the threshold is reached where certain players find the game is no longer for them, and before reaching that point, rather than being the frog that doesn't even realise it's being boiled, they speak out against such changes. You saw as much with the male Viera, and granted, you were courteous about expressions of disappointment with the design. Nonetheless, unanimity will not be achieved on such matters and the devs are surely aware of this complexity each time they grant a request. Yoshi identified it himself when discussing the matter of removing genderlocks.



So they're not oblivious to the mixed reception certain changes can have... and once more, this discussion is not just limited to the icon design in and of itself (which we can agree is trivial), but the other things I mentioned as well. To proceed on the basis that this is all about an icon’s look is a trifle inaccurate, and in the case of some posts (not you), disingenuous.

You can and should be skeptical of companies and their actions, but to even draw parallels between this and the Blizz situation and almost gleefully use that type of abuse and heartache as a bat to take swings at SE with is incredibly inappropriate. I don't think that's a controversial take on my part and I'll stand by it.

I also have doubts about how big of an issue this phobia was for people that they had to change the icon, but at the end of the day does it really matter? If they said they changed it because people (like yourself, and myself as well) thought it was ugly would that have made a difference? I think it looks a little better but still not great, is it pandering if they change or tweak it again based on that? Would it be such a scandal then as well?

Yes, I do genuinely think it sucks for you and others that were disappointed with how male viera came out looking, especially after how vocal you had all been to see them added. But to repeatedly lash out, belittle, and mock these "vocal minorities" that allegedly influenced and ruined male viera is unnecessary. It's also completely discounting the very real possibility that people at SE probably also had their own vision for how they were supposed to look and looking at fanart comfirmed this was something (some? I keep seeing minority but I don't think anyone actually has these numbers) players would be open to seeing. It certainly wasn't how Matsuno had envisioned them, but he wasn't involved in their design. And let's be completely honest with ourselves here, had Matsuno envisioned them as dainty tiny little waifs we'd be talking about how this is FFXIV and that vision should be disregarded.

[KizuyaKatogami]

lsnip

It’s the fact it’s something so minuscule(and also the fact from the original poster, it seems like it isn’t even people with the actual phobia complaining about it which…is honestly a common phenomenon nowadays.) But something so minuscule was able to get SE’s attention more than likely because it’s simply the jp forums. NA (and EU for that matter) has always gotten the short end of the stick when it comes to SE recognizing pleas and feedback. There seems to be apparent favoritism and a post i posted a few pages back goes into that.In regards to the male viera thing, i think a big problem people had with the whole thing was that they couldve made them more appealing to all by simply making the height slider more varied, and giving them at least one masculine face similar to what miqote has. Which was a common thing brought up on the NA side but ofc, thats NA, not JP which SE seems to favor.

[Shougun]

Sort of on the topic of change, while I wouldn't claim it a phobia, the image viewer vibe of our map UI drives me crazy lol. If you zoom out, and sometimes the maps start that way, you will see the edge of the map and the border of the map UI have a transparent see-through section like a window with bad tint. Of all the map UI of other games I don't recall this issue so... Annoying? It's a very first world problem situation (meaning non-serious, clearly a pet-peeve of mine and I'm making it clear I don't believe it 'destroys the game'.. just looks 'meh'). But the map viewer always reminds me of a beta system that wasn't finished at the transition of 1.0 to 2.0, because of that. It doesn't help I'm particularly fond of WoW's pretty border art, and so going from that neatly engraved bordered socketed system to 'image viewer' 1.0, for my own opinion- is less than ideal, though like I said I can't think of another game I played and at least enjoyed that had such a 'we obviously have this loading an image inside the box' vibe (it's particularly this game, where I just don't like the map viewer, and I call it an image viewer over map because that's what it looks like- like I could imagine it might load my screenshots in game and that would fit perfectly as that's what it is). At least to me the fact the map can disconnect from the map UI border and leave transparent window pane look takes away the vibe it's a map, and also I just hate seeing the hole lol. It's like purposefully leaving holes in your terrain, you don't want that- I'd think.

Someone give me a phobia name for this lol, I'm getting it changed!

Also on that, the color difference for ready chocobos and full exp ready chocobos (when using light theme) is still very small, I've done color tests I'm not colorblind - it's just super similar.

[Yencat]

It’s the fact it’s something so minuscule(and also the fact from the original poster, it seems like it isn’t even people with the actual phobia complaining about it which…is honestly a common phenomenon nowadays.) But something so minuscule was able to get SE’s attention more than likely because it’s simply the jp forums. NA (and EU for that matter) has always gotten the short end of the stick when it comes to SE recognizing pleas and feedback. There seems to be apparent favoritism and a post i posted a few pages back goes into that.In regards to the male viera thing, i think a big problem people had with the whole thing was that they couldve made them more appealing to all by simply making the height slider more varied, and giving them at least one masculine face similar to what miqote has. Which was a common thing brought up on the NA side but ofc, thats NA, not JP which SE seems to favor.

It was something miniscule with a miniscule fix. If they changed it because it was perceived by players as ugly or unappealing it would still be a small issue with an equally small fix, but I suspect the reaction would have been very different and more along the "Okay?" expected seeing.

It sucks when what you're asking for goes seemingly ignored (I play Viera, I very much get it) while they do this, but some fixes and changes are orders of magnitude larger than fiddling with a JPEG.

They could've done a lot of things with viera or any other race, I think it probably would have been better if they did, but obviously they're not interested in appealing to absolutely everyone interested in the race. They ignored a lot of talk about increasing the height slider for female Viera to be able to make them shorter as well so clearly they do have their own vision about how they want the races to look beyond player requests, and unfortunately this is the way the cookie crumbled for "your side".

Kind of off topic but when female viera hit the benchmark I had 0 interest in them as well and found them quite disappointing to be honest, it took a good long while before I warmed up to them and now I don't want to play anything else. Hopefully some people that are disappointed now will come around to enjoy them when they're actually playable.