The fanbase exploded

Lord.Bachus

this board seems death
but anyway
the fanbase exploded because of the new announced races are gender locked
and the new jobs are frowned uppon by many..

The developers are cursed all around by many of the so called fans.
personally it seems moe likethe majorrity of them are behaving like small spoiled brats.

Bloodaxes

Seems like the norm then.

It's like there's only 1 playable race in the game. Wait, there's more!

Kajidourden

I mean, SE made REALLY stupid decisions.  Gender-locking is a trope of every variety of Asian developer that SE had up until this point basically avoided, much to their fan's pleasure.  The fact that they were different was something their loyal fans liked, and they decided to change it.  I don't know why they thought it was a good idea in the first place, again they're only reinforcing the stereotype about developers from asia and gender-locked classes which is also generally seen as being cheap.

The other side of this was their choice of jobs....the game does not need more DPS classes right now, it just doesn't.  Adding another healer and/or tank with different/new mechanics would entice players who wouldn't play a healer before (especially if DNC was a healer ala FFXI) to help fill the slots of the dungeon finder.  

Neither of these things are game-breaking but it doesn't mean that they weren't still really stupid decisions.

goboygo

Healer classes affect overall game balance so developers tend to not want to add them, its always safer just to add yet another DPS class to your game.

Lord.Bachus

https://youtu.be/MYszm-lL-jg

There are also quite a lot of people possitive
this video explains much better what to expect

Panther2103

parrotpholk said:

The complaining is straight stupid.  I wanted a new healer and wanted dancer specifically to be it but I am fine with it being a new ranged option as well with support functions.  I hope as we learn more it is heavy towards support options but looks beautiful either way. 

Sorry but the gender locking is fine as well as you get a male race and female.  If that is the biggest explosions then it shows people have nothing real to bitch about.

And all those people saying they will quit over gender locking are full of it and everyone knows it.

I think they just don't realize how much work goes into making male and female of a new race, especially if they are adding two. In a game like FFXIV where you can play every class on one character, you have to model every single armor to fit both, and anything that interacts in a different way. 

bng28

I mean.. real tough for a AAA developer right..... womp.  They have the skill, time and resources, they CHOSE not to use them if thats the case.

Call it what you will, this is simply my opinion.  Its lazy development at best, to gender lock.  Its also considered a heavily influenced asian design in western MMO development, to which most player i know do not enjoy.  The only other game i can think of developed in the west that had gender locks was WAR.  I'm sure thats not the only one.

As we are an audience in the west and the way dev's make there games here are very different; not just in game design but art style too.  I cant necessarily say i'm surprised... SE IS a Japanese game developer.

However, Its a restriction that feels artificial and cheap i think is the gripe of most including my own.

Rommie10-284

I think the gender-locked races were a bad call, given that M/F of one race results in far less outrage.  The Boss has said there are no more races coming, so I can see them adding the missing pair for 6.0 without it bumping anything new.  Then again, his word is what he set on fire by gender-locking in the first place.

The "missing" healer, again I think it was a mistake, but because they added a Tank class.  Two new DPS classes would have rolled some eyeballs, but not exploded them.  I'd bet on a 4th healer class in the development queue now, but that's still up to two years and three months away at the most.

Poor development decisions had this game dead in 1.0.  If the 2.0 crew is starting to slip up and make bad choices of their own, it could all go south in a hurry.  But I do think they listen and try to correct slip-ups - it's always a question of will they listen THIS time, though.  Game Developer promises have a long and sordid history of being broken.

Maurgrim

When I hear gender lock I always get the feeling of lazy work, they make a class specific for a gender so they don't have to do all the work for a second gender.

If a MMO are based on set lore and only specific genders can be a class then I get it.

Albatroes

Yoshida's reasoning behind the gender-locked races (according to the interview mrhappy did with yoshida) was because they were afraid people might not like their take on male viera given that they said they didn't have any foundational material from other games to work with.

The problem with this answer is that it makes the hrothgar being gender-locked stupid since yoshida said they were based off of ransos from FFX (even though in reality they just use the roe model with different heads), which of course had females....

Overall, I'd see this as one of 2 things: they are just lazy or this expansion is just going to launch in an early access state with the other variants coming as a 'feature' in a patch. I'd go with the latter because this is a vanity game at its core and this game's community wants as many options as possible in that regard.

ragz45

Gender locked races/classes are commonplace and not a big deal in Japan and Korea.  They are even enjoyed a bit.  Honestly the dev's don't give a rats ass what the western audience thinks.  They will continue to make the game for the East, and port it over to the west, and the west will keep buying it up.

But as far as who they are developing the game for, and their target audience goes.  Don't fool yourself into think that it's you if you are in the west.  Because it's not.  Yes they have a lot of loyal fans over here, and yes, the west is a big market for them.  But even then, you are not their primary market.

f1seb

Blah (this quote system......)

f1seb

I agree completely with ragz45 here.  The one thing that made Asian RPG's special to me is that they were made for a different audience, and then I got to play it.  Seeing what people in Japan like and love about Final Fantasy games (even parts that made no sense to me) was a way to experience a sliver of a different culture.

And this is where you have to realize, not every game will be made for American's that line up with American views and ways of "how things should be" and what makes sense to them.  And that is partly why I lake FFXIV.

DrunkWolf

but i live in california we dont have genders anymore, so how can they lock something that doesnt exist?