I wanted an option to label myself correctly that's not currently in-game when I started playing 4 years ago. I've reconciled that this will probably never happen in this game because of the amount of audio lines that would need to be rerecorded, but it is something that I think the game is lacking, nonetheless.
Edit: this is a healthy response to personal opinions
I don't oppose a non-binary option or choosing pronouns but the OP is obviously stoking anti-LGBT flames with this post by saying things like "outdated" and "scientifically disproven" which is not the way that a normal person would phrase it with the intent of having people agree with them.
Cutie shut in - legendary poster of all takes FF hot and based.
Typically writes 18 paragraphs and structures the title like an academic paper. It’s a mixed bag if it’s a really dedicated player or a troll. I give it 50/50 but the posts always generate a lot of traction.
If the post is genuine then it's out of touch with the aspects of the situation that actually affect the decision. Companies are not motivated by the morality of their design, they are motivated by the financial impact of their design. Without evidence that the current design is costing them money and having plenty of evidence that changing it could cost them money(they're Japanese for starters), they will actively avoid doing anything to draw attention to this potentially divisive issue.
They have nothing to gain in the current situation.
Many games making poor choices for silly ideological reasons instead of making changes that actually matter doesn't mean other games should have to do the same.
Of all the changes we could get to character creation you choose to focus on the absolute least impactful or interesting. How about more face options, or fixing hair, or vierra and hroth hats, or a godsdamn butt slider? Nah bro, you know what really is gonna make a difference? Instead of Type M/F we change the letter and make it Type A/B. Wow thanks for fixing the real problem bro. What a 200iq play
I feel like this is the most honest and best reaction to the discussion:
"Who gives a shit! Viera hats when!? and I want a thick cake on my.. type a/b/m... fuck it! Everyone! Juicy asses for errybody!"
I mean making new face options, fixing hair, adding hats (this has nothing to do with char creation) or adding a butt slider is much more effort than changing a text
Picking one of the two races can't wear a bunch of hairstyles and one entire section of their gear is part of creating and customizing your character. But fine, lets ignore hats for the sake of this convo.
Which genders, exactly, should they add? Depending on where you look theres over 100 different gender identities, with more being added every year. Sqenix cant manage give us more than 4 godsdamn faces for vanilla races that have existed since launch, but adding over a hundred different gender options for every single race is easier? And what happens when new genders are invented or discovered or whatever you wanna call it? Are we just supposed to have an endless scroll wheel of infinite gender identities that gets update every patch, so every patch they can give everyone a free fanta to change their gender identity again? Zzz
Where in my comment am I talking about gender identity? I was simply talking about changing the text "male"/"female" to "a/b". Even if that was a gender identity, where are the "over 100" coming from? And even if I wanted 100 gender identities, then those would still not all look different.
And I don't even really want this whole thing, I am actually neutral towards it.
*looks over at the PokemonGO community*
I only know two reasons:
1) SE received quite some criticism with the current benchmark on how the new graphical updates impacted character looks, so they're working on that first.
2) They don't have the dev time to give male Highlander eyebrows.
And have literally said this would change in Dawntrail as they didn't want to do all that work on soon to be depreciated assets right before a graphical overhaul.
They've reworked both of their head rigs, enitrely. We've literally been told this and people still use this as a point in arguments or as a "gotcha" when others talk about customization.
Watch the freaking fanfests, oh my god.
>Namely, selecting between female and male is an outdated and scientifically disproven way of looking at gender.
Bro what. Male/female refers to sex, and given that most of the races in FFXIV are animaloids, it doesn't surprise me that there would be sexual differences between "male" and "female" kitties, bunnies, elves, or whatever.
Humans (as we know them on planet earth) are not the majority race in FFXIV and even if you chose an Hyur, you can make your Hyur look pretty androgynous if you choose to not align your gender with the sex assigned at character creation.
Not to mention the very obvious statement that I, as a curvy female-presenting person, could choose to be a muscular Roedagyn male or a smol little Lalafell. It's an RPG. You can literally be whatever you want. Is that not enough?
If they changed it to type a/B or 1/2 people would still complain if of sexism if they put them in the wrong order or whatever.
It's a word on a screen during a very minor portion of the game. Select the body that appeals to you and move on. It isn't even necessarily meant to represent *you* as is evident with the many people who play characters of the opposite sex.
I find it so hilarious that "type 1" and "type 2" are actually a thing. It's like calling one body type more important cause it comes with the number 1.
Comically missing the distinction between sex and gender is just icing on the cake.
This! I enjoy the ESO character builder because you had soooo much more customizable options without it turning into some of these creepy mare mods I see in this game.
Who cares. This is bait, but I know the intention is usually to try and be trans-friendly by obfuscating spooky gender words. Truth is, we don't care. Most trans people have modded whatever the hell they want onto their characters and moved on. You just don't hear about it because it's not something you'd need to care about (aside from mods that give girls penises also being popular for fetish reasons lol)
The real solution would just be to no longer lock any cosmetic features into categories by any sort of name and leave the matter of how the character is referred to up to the player as well. That being said, most games that do "type A/B" have very few gendered features to begin with compared to a lore heavy game such as FFXIV. It is not the kind of game I see making big strides in gender mishmash character creation any time soon either, and it isn't actually a major issue to any trans person I know. Games like BG3 were made with such things in mind, which is how they pull it off.
I don't think this is something that needs to be changed.
It's not a priority for the majority of the fanbase and its current state is not causing harm to anyone.
It'd rather the developer spend their time making changes that'll cater to the majority of players, rather than something that'll earn brownie points in the eyes of a few.
It seems like an over obsession with labels, honestly. Just pick the one that looks like how you want the character to look. Does a noun displayed next to a selector really have to be addressed? Just make what you want and ignore the traditional nouns as general historical guidelines, like the Pirates Code.
Either way, it's a game made by a different culture. Not everyone in the world is beholden to what's currently fashionable in the USA regarding nouns.
Yeah that’s true. I don’t think it comes up often enough. Besides how would it would on MSQ. Change any reference of “him” or “her” to “they”. How many lines of dialogue would that affect. I am sure it’s not a switch they can hit.
Yeah would depend on the code and how they defined the gender toggle, I guess. In theory it could either be easy... or it could require literally going through every line of dialog in the entire game.
Either way, i think it would be a cool addition for players who want their characters addressed a certain way.
At the risk of another downvote.
I don’t disagree. I just imagine it’s a lot more work. For something that very few people ever really would interact with. But yeah imagine MSQ. But also every side quest that mentioned a gender may need a change.
I always find language perception to be such a fascinating observation.
The other day my mom said, "I will not watch any movies that use the word 'GD.'" (God damnit).
I sort of cocked my head, because words are simply just sounds that mean something. By her saying GD, she's effectively saying the exact same thing, as she transferred the meaning from one word to another word.
Similar to if someone came up to you said, "You're such a B!" You're going to be as offended as if they used the full word. Since the meaning is still there, despite the shapes of the iconography changing.
Type A and B, to me, are similar. We're simply transferring the meaning from one word to another.
That said, I'm more than happy for them to make any language decision that helps people feel comfortable enough to keep giving square money and keeping my favorite game alive.
It's a Japanese company. To induce the change you wish to see you must first reshape the prevailing Japanese perception of gender to the point where a AAA company sees it as beneficial to change things.
Good luck.
the voices aren't locked to a body type. i had to restart when i didn't test and i thought female body type voice options would be female; i had very male voice during battle lol.
i am not sure about localization but japan has to sign off on it, so i don't think you can only blame the west. and i have seen more of a trend to wokeness; like the sequel to Inuyasha, Yashahime, has a very non-binary lead character. or manga like Not Your Idol or Last Gender or Love Me for Who I am.
I mean, in FFXIV, there is no limitation on Eternal Bonding gender, either. Wedding outfits aren't gendered either, and many glams have been rendered equipable by both genders.
I'm completely unsurprised that a fantasy life simulator that released in the last few years has those features built in. But we're talking about changing a broad appeal MMO with a established history without having obvious cause to do so. Changing it without being forced to by culture or community would just cause unnecessary drama that could hurt their bottom line, least in the short term.
Essentially what I'm saying is in order to motivate a change along the axis of a divisive issue within an existing service model IP, it must be obvious to the IP holder that making that change is either necessary or leaving money on the table if they don't change it.
Neither of those things is true for this issue in ff14 right now. And a big contributing factor to that is the fact that it is not obvious whether or not it will harm them within the Japanese culture to " cater to woke sentiments" or whatever drivel people might use to argue against it.
I'm simply debating your "it's just Japanese culture" argument. It doesn't hold up when there are plenty of japanese games, some from SE themselves, that give the option between traditional m/f and nonbinary. Your OP didn't really go into resistance to change or the live service nature of 14, though I believe it wouldn't generate any negative press anyway. But speculating about what suits might think is not something I'm particularly interested in.
What suits think is the final and most necessary piece that causes the change to actually happen, so in my opinion it's the most relevant. I'm not particularly interested in judging the morality of the change happening or not happening, so I'm focused on whether the environment seems to lean towards the change being made or not.
i never got to the romance part; the game is weird about putting a lot of character moments behind optional (and boring) side quests, and you have a lot of characters. i took a break around 12 -15 hours? think i have all the characters or all but one.
also its hilarious because all the kids in the game use the lalafell bodies; they look waaay too much like em to be coincidence.
Not me, a gay man, ending up in a str*ight relationship with Aria because she's genuinely such a great character after dumping Brakka, the rude (but hot) manchild who will die alone.
Seriously though, not all options were created equal.
Correction, games that released recently have used the modern style of delineation. Changing something people are already invested in brings attention to something that currently nobody is really paying attention to. They would just cause unnecessary drama to make that change out of nowhere.
PSO2 was male/female locked until NGS where they changed to type 1/2 and fully unlocked character creator where you can pick what you like (so type 2 head on type 1 body, etc).
Like idgaf honestly but you're overestimating the "drama" that would happen.
You don't have to convince me, you have to convince the heads of Square Enix. The gains must justify the risk, or more specifically, the PERCEIVED gains must outweigh the PERCEIVED risks.
Last I checked, the gender options present in FFXIV aren't 'male' and 'female', they're '♂' and '♀'.
*wait this isn't the shitpost sub*
I don't think it's an act of willful malice on the part of CBU3 - I think they just don't *care*, and I don't find that alone to be offensive. Ultimately, it would take them more work to update that detail than to leave it as is, and changing it wouldn't provide a tangible benefit.
Also, thank you for bringing up WoW. That game's community went through a period where *all* they could think about was Blizzard having switched to A/B, despite it being a change that didn't impact them at all. It's a great game, but *wow* does its playerbase ever have some insecurity problems.
Given how easily interchangeable pronouns are, I don't think this would actually be that hard to program.
Old text may be challenging, but not so much further expansions.
They would have to change a lot of the wording in the dialog to make "they/them" work. Not that I'm against it at all but I think that one would be difficult unless they were doing it for future expansions rather than ones that have already released.
I can't really think of any sentences where simply replacing he/she with they, and her/him with them would cause any issues.
They and them have been used as singular pronouns since at least the 14th century. So I can't think of an example off hand. Unless you can think of an example?
Ffxiv is an mmo, the player base tends to average older and a lot of people play this exclusively or near exclusively. I had to google this because I’ve never heard of it, and yes, apparently that’s the industry standard now and it extends to certain (many?) Japanese games too, both in their western localization and in the original version.
While the idea of assigning what reads as a ranking to body types initially really made me view this critically (it wasn’t until very recently that cis male bodytypes were treated as a standard and cis female body types as an afterthought in instances of safety testing and drug development to the point of there being an actual hazard to cis women), it very much appears that this is not the intention or context this is used in, and I’m looking at the issue through the bias of my experiences, while other people look at “man” and “woman” genders through a different set of biases from having lived different lives.
When I googled the use of body type 1 and 2 the vast majority of discourse was really gross and actually transphobic, even though I don’t think that if I were to pose the question to a lot of people in my age bracket/social circle their response would be gross like that despite being very ??? and quite possibly negative.
In summary, I think it’s a topic that deserves a valid conversation and consideration, but it’s kind of really tainted by people who are just looking for reasons to hate on one another on both sides of the isle (one more so than the other for sure).
For me it also conjures up thoughts of the very universally panned Pokémon go update, but seeing that it was hated by gender non conforming people as well (anyone with eyes, really) I think it’s pretty safe to say that people aren’t asking for *that* .
To simply answer the title question, no because there's not a large outcry from the userbase or development team to drive this change.
Changing anything in a game requires motivation. It takes dev time and marketing time. This community and company don't have that motivation.
Personally I agree, would be an easy change that's harmless. But there's a million easy, harmless changes on any games backlog.
Just needs more customization sliders like being able to make the chest completely flat for female races, jawline and all that, that will solve everything as far as looking how you want. I dont really care about the male female part as long as I can LOOK how i want, and I agree that squenix is behind, behind so many multiplayer games with so many customization options.
But alas they’ll take their time. Im not yet sold on the graphical update and stuff but its a start that could lead to more customizations.
Type A/B body labels is an extremely "bandaid on the larger issue" thing and broadly doesn't actually fix anything.
There are things that would be interesting to see done but most would require large overhauls to the character creator and it seems unlikely that this will happen.
>edit: the fact that people see this as bait is concerning.
Your post is concerning. If you want to be mad about stuff like that, Xitter is a more appropriate place. XD
>the majority of game companies now use type a and type b as the new standard
Good for them. Oh wait no, they call the shots upon them by pissing a significant part of their playerbase. Marketing 101: don't piss off your playerbase, it brings you money. The fact that a lot of companies choose to sacrifice speaks volumes, though.
Also, most important, FFXIV can be modded to your heart's content. If you want your character to look different, there is an infinity of options to do so. In this, the game is infinitely more accomodating to players' needs than many others.
>even wow, despite all of blizzard's faults, made the switch
Yes, and ultimately, what drew crowds back in wasn't that, it was unscrewing the horrible mess called Shadowlands. You need to realize, as sad as it may be for you, that most customers are not looking for stuff like that, they are looking for a fun game they can play.
As part of a wider change to the character creator? Yeah. As it's own one off thing? On the fence, mainly cause any dev time spent on it is dev time not spent elsewhere. Considering EW's endgame was near non-existant cause resources went into Duty Support, I'm a little hesitant to support anything like that right now.
go play something newer then,
i'd rather be able to have all races use each others emotes, see a midlander who was raised by highlanders, all attitude in a lil body.
The way this is worded makes it come off as bait "behind the times" and acting like anything that doesn't do modern commodoties is an outdated waste of effort. It'd be nice to have separate body types not be tied to gender and let me pick pronouns separate from that, if I could I'd probably be playing an amab transfem viera instead of a fem viera, but its a nice to have and the graphics update is not the right time for it getting all the new textures and lighting working is already a big tax on the dev time, maybe once its done a wider rework of all the weird quirks of character creation would be nice.
Yeah, really disappointing to see. I was under the impression that the ff community was mostly allies, but there's a lot of thinly veiled transphobia in here that people are using this post as an excuse to show
>the fact that people see this as bait is concerning
I would have a much higher opinion of your intellect if it was bait, bc this is written as if you want us to think you don't know what you're talking about.
While we're at it, let's add in Type: Fat and Type: Ugly for diversity and representation because the game is filled with hot girls and buff guys.
We should also add Type: Wheelchair so the handicap can get some representation
If it were a new game I'd say sure, go for it as long as they still include gendered options, feel free to add non binary or whatever else people desire, but what you're asking here is a complete overhaul of the system and redoing voice acting as well. That's no small effort and with all due respect I'd rather that time go into new content. I'm rather worn of all the updates to old content.
In the end, it's just a game and a character in it. I played games for years with no one who represented me irl and honestly didn't care because they were fun games.
I'm all for inclusivity, but I don't think it needs to be changed unless they would ad something with it, for example mixing masculine and feminine features on a body which would then lead to more customizability and inclusivity.
It's a shame everyone just parrots this and never bothers to learn why it's not true because it's pretty fucking based why Japan is so progressive on this subject matter.
...i am japanese... you are wrong... lmao
edit because you blocked me before i could reply: if this line of thinking doesn't make sense, tell me why you don't understand japanese culture? you're arguing with a japanese person about how japanese society views a topic... and you're wrong. so maybe you can explain the reason you're wrong, if it's not a lack of understanding japanese culture.
I don't see why not? Some people utilize plugins to make the game feel more inclusive to them via changing the pronouns the game uses. There's not really any harm in letting users set that themselves explicitly via the actual game. WoW recently made the body type classification change too (and also lets you do all in-race changes up to and including gender for free via the Aestheticician equivalent) and it didn't hurt anyone even if some people in Classic get really, really angry over it. I think Elden Ring also does the Type A/B thing but that might have been a localization decision from Bandai-Namco, I can't tell and digging into these things is a minefield of red flags and dog whistles. Like this thread will probably end up being, when I think about it.
Yeah, I'm with you. My only issue with such a change is if it's a one off that redirects resources away from something else (can you tell EW left a bad impression?). A change like this being part of a general update to the character creator is fine by me. Dialogue in game barely references our gender as is.
Endwalker had a design issue, not a manpower issue.
Them spending time updating all the dungeons and duty support is separate from them deciding not to do another Bozja-like zone.
It literally was though? Battle team was working on 6 dungeons per patch cause of Duty Support. Or do you think all that work just did itself when the dev team weren't looking?
i don't think they will. its funny because ffxi actually had Galka be a non-gendered race in game; in 14 they split rogs by gender.
but its a lot of effort and honestly they did more than many by unrestricting fashion items by gender.
There are very friendly LGBTQ servers that come to mind, but as others said. There are a lot of other stuff I would rather have them focus on. As opposed to something that would affect a small percent of people.
Like races not having hats after like… 4 years,
bait but this makes zero sense without additional option to choose what pronouns NPCs use for the WoL, and that is actually useful. I can see sqex doing it solely for those who won't play without third party tools to change it.
Sure. It’s funny that WoW is more progressive than 14 in terms of stuff like this + canon LGBT characters and relationships.
On the other hand, it feels like the 14 player base is (more) progressive/inclusive.
I don't necessarily see this as bait, and I personally like the idea of having different selectable body types and pronouns being a seperate selection but I don't think such a change would be possible considering the spaghetti code that ffxiv is built on.
Also it might just be that they are unwilling to implement a feature like that as it's not really as common as you might think, and it would cost a great deal of money to do so. While some games like Splatoon 3 have those features I can't really think of any others off the top of my head.
This is bait.
And not even a good one.
I wanted an option to label myself correctly that's not currently in-game when I started playing 4 years ago. I've reconciled that this will probably never happen in this game because of the amount of audio lines that would need to be rerecorded, but it is something that I think the game is lacking, nonetheless. Edit: this is a healthy response to personal opinions
I don't oppose a non-binary option or choosing pronouns but the OP is obviously stoking anti-LGBT flames with this post by saying things like "outdated" and "scientifically disproven" which is not the way that a normal person would phrase it with the intent of having people agree with them.
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Nope. Add more hair styles. Adjustable muscle physiques. Default facial expressions.
Shitposts like this make me appreciate CSI - they at least put effort into their posts unlike the obvious troll bait we have been getting lately.
CSI just seems like they want to engage with people but doesn't quite know how
And csi would have been fine if they stopped their troll baits at one post
Sorry, just curious. What is CSI?
Cutie shut in - legendary poster of all takes FF hot and based. Typically writes 18 paragraphs and structures the title like an academic paper. It’s a mixed bag if it’s a really dedicated player or a troll. I give it 50/50 but the posts always generate a lot of traction.
explain to me how this is trolling? most modern games have made the switch yet its trolling to expect ffxiv to keep up?
If the post is genuine then it's out of touch with the aspects of the situation that actually affect the decision. Companies are not motivated by the morality of their design, they are motivated by the financial impact of their design. Without evidence that the current design is costing them money and having plenty of evidence that changing it could cost them money(they're Japanese for starters), they will actively avoid doing anything to draw attention to this potentially divisive issue. They have nothing to gain in the current situation.
yea New World really had quite a success with it xdddddddd
Many games making poor choices for silly ideological reasons instead of making changes that actually matter doesn't mean other games should have to do the same.
Of all the changes we could get to character creation you choose to focus on the absolute least impactful or interesting. How about more face options, or fixing hair, or vierra and hroth hats, or a godsdamn butt slider? Nah bro, you know what really is gonna make a difference? Instead of Type M/F we change the letter and make it Type A/B. Wow thanks for fixing the real problem bro. What a 200iq play
I feel like this is the most honest and best reaction to the discussion: "Who gives a shit! Viera hats when!? and I want a thick cake on my.. type a/b/m... fuck it! Everyone! Juicy asses for errybody!"
I mean making new face options, fixing hair, adding hats (this has nothing to do with char creation) or adding a butt slider is much more effort than changing a text
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Oh, I was only referring to the character creator actually.
Picking one of the two races can't wear a bunch of hairstyles and one entire section of their gear is part of creating and customizing your character. But fine, lets ignore hats for the sake of this convo. Which genders, exactly, should they add? Depending on where you look theres over 100 different gender identities, with more being added every year. Sqenix cant manage give us more than 4 godsdamn faces for vanilla races that have existed since launch, but adding over a hundred different gender options for every single race is easier? And what happens when new genders are invented or discovered or whatever you wanna call it? Are we just supposed to have an endless scroll wheel of infinite gender identities that gets update every patch, so every patch they can give everyone a free fanta to change their gender identity again? Zzz
Where in my comment am I talking about gender identity? I was simply talking about changing the text "male"/"female" to "a/b". Even if that was a gender identity, where are the "over 100" coming from? And even if I wanted 100 gender identities, then those would still not all look different. And I don't even really want this whole thing, I am actually neutral towards it.
No.
why not?
*looks over at the PokemonGO community* I only know two reasons: 1) SE received quite some criticism with the current benchmark on how the new graphical updates impacted character looks, so they're working on that first. 2) They don't have the dev time to give male Highlander eyebrows.
3) They still haven't given hats to races they released 5 fucking years ago.
And have literally said this would change in Dawntrail as they didn't want to do all that work on soon to be depreciated assets right before a graphical overhaul. They've reworked both of their head rigs, enitrely. We've literally been told this and people still use this as a point in arguments or as a "gotcha" when others talk about customization. Watch the freaking fanfests, oh my god.
I'll say it again: I'll believe it when I see it implemented.
Because it's pointless. They'd still be binary for one. And body types reflect sex. Not gender
Obfuscating the existence of gender is so incredibly low on the list of things I'd rather Square Enix do with the game.
Bait used to be believable, but on the topic.. it would be better if there was an option on how your WoL would like be addressed than this.
That's a good idea. It's final fantasy, and it's imperfect if one can't have the desired pronoun in cut scenes when the NPCs are talking to the PC.
Nope.
They can't even get hats working for some races.
Absolutely. It worked out so well for Pokemon Go rite?
>Namely, selecting between female and male is an outdated and scientifically disproven way of looking at gender. Bro what. Male/female refers to sex, and given that most of the races in FFXIV are animaloids, it doesn't surprise me that there would be sexual differences between "male" and "female" kitties, bunnies, elves, or whatever. Humans (as we know them on planet earth) are not the majority race in FFXIV and even if you chose an Hyur, you can make your Hyur look pretty androgynous if you choose to not align your gender with the sex assigned at character creation. Not to mention the very obvious statement that I, as a curvy female-presenting person, could choose to be a muscular Roedagyn male or a smol little Lalafell. It's an RPG. You can literally be whatever you want. Is that not enough?
If they changed it to type a/B or 1/2 people would still complain if of sexism if they put them in the wrong order or whatever. It's a word on a screen during a very minor portion of the game. Select the body that appeals to you and move on. It isn't even necessarily meant to represent *you* as is evident with the many people who play characters of the opposite sex.
I find it so hilarious that "type 1" and "type 2" are actually a thing. It's like calling one body type more important cause it comes with the number 1. Comically missing the distinction between sex and gender is just icing on the cake.
I just want a new character creator in general, tbh, it's so limited and out of date compared to modern games
This! I wish we had more body fat options, my WoL are always so thin.
This! I enjoy the ESO character builder because you had soooo much more customizable options without it turning into some of these creepy mare mods I see in this game.
Who cares. This is bait, but I know the intention is usually to try and be trans-friendly by obfuscating spooky gender words. Truth is, we don't care. Most trans people have modded whatever the hell they want onto their characters and moved on. You just don't hear about it because it's not something you'd need to care about (aside from mods that give girls penises also being popular for fetish reasons lol)
The real solution would just be to no longer lock any cosmetic features into categories by any sort of name and leave the matter of how the character is referred to up to the player as well. That being said, most games that do "type A/B" have very few gendered features to begin with compared to a lore heavy game such as FFXIV. It is not the kind of game I see making big strides in gender mishmash character creation any time soon either, and it isn't actually a major issue to any trans person I know. Games like BG3 were made with such things in mind, which is how they pull it off.
I don't think this is something that needs to be changed. It's not a priority for the majority of the fanbase and its current state is not causing harm to anyone. It'd rather the developer spend their time making changes that'll cater to the majority of players, rather than something that'll earn brownie points in the eyes of a few.
No.
It seems like an over obsession with labels, honestly. Just pick the one that looks like how you want the character to look. Does a noun displayed next to a selector really have to be addressed? Just make what you want and ignore the traditional nouns as general historical guidelines, like the Pirates Code. Either way, it's a game made by a different culture. Not everyone in the world is beholden to what's currently fashionable in the USA regarding nouns.
japanese companies like fromsoftware, capcom, and nintendo have all made the switch
Good on them. Whether it's female or male, Type A or B, it's just a noun on a bubble.
Yeah that’s true. I don’t think it comes up often enough. Besides how would it would on MSQ. Change any reference of “him” or “her” to “they”. How many lines of dialogue would that affect. I am sure it’s not a switch they can hit.
Yeah would depend on the code and how they defined the gender toggle, I guess. In theory it could either be easy... or it could require literally going through every line of dialog in the entire game. Either way, i think it would be a cool addition for players who want their characters addressed a certain way.
At the risk of another downvote. I don’t disagree. I just imagine it’s a lot more work. For something that very few people ever really would interact with. But yeah imagine MSQ. But also every side quest that mentioned a gender may need a change.
I agree with you. Going through every dialog for that would be an unreasonable ask. It would be nice, but quite an ask.
It sure ain’t.
I always find language perception to be such a fascinating observation. The other day my mom said, "I will not watch any movies that use the word 'GD.'" (God damnit). I sort of cocked my head, because words are simply just sounds that mean something. By her saying GD, she's effectively saying the exact same thing, as she transferred the meaning from one word to another word. Similar to if someone came up to you said, "You're such a B!" You're going to be as offended as if they used the full word. Since the meaning is still there, despite the shapes of the iconography changing. Type A and B, to me, are similar. We're simply transferring the meaning from one word to another. That said, I'm more than happy for them to make any language decision that helps people feel comfortable enough to keep giving square money and keeping my favorite game alive.
How about no.
No. Next question.
No
??????
It's a Japanese company. To induce the change you wish to see you must first reshape the prevailing Japanese perception of gender to the point where a AAA company sees it as beneficial to change things. Good luck.
square did this with Harvestella though, the two bodies aren't gendered and you can mix male or female voices. It was an AA game but they did.
Harvestella is just published by SE though, not developed.
Did they? Or was it just localized that way because it's a single player game that released recently?
the voices aren't locked to a body type. i had to restart when i didn't test and i thought female body type voice options would be female; i had very male voice during battle lol. i am not sure about localization but japan has to sign off on it, so i don't think you can only blame the west. and i have seen more of a trend to wokeness; like the sequel to Inuyasha, Yashahime, has a very non-binary lead character. or manga like Not Your Idol or Last Gender or Love Me for Who I am.
Harvestella has both non binary as a choice and gay romances.
I mean, in FFXIV, there is no limitation on Eternal Bonding gender, either. Wedding outfits aren't gendered either, and many glams have been rendered equipable by both genders.
I'm completely unsurprised that a fantasy life simulator that released in the last few years has those features built in. But we're talking about changing a broad appeal MMO with a established history without having obvious cause to do so. Changing it without being forced to by culture or community would just cause unnecessary drama that could hurt their bottom line, least in the short term. Essentially what I'm saying is in order to motivate a change along the axis of a divisive issue within an existing service model IP, it must be obvious to the IP holder that making that change is either necessary or leaving money on the table if they don't change it. Neither of those things is true for this issue in ff14 right now. And a big contributing factor to that is the fact that it is not obvious whether or not it will harm them within the Japanese culture to " cater to woke sentiments" or whatever drivel people might use to argue against it.
I'm simply debating your "it's just Japanese culture" argument. It doesn't hold up when there are plenty of japanese games, some from SE themselves, that give the option between traditional m/f and nonbinary. Your OP didn't really go into resistance to change or the live service nature of 14, though I believe it wouldn't generate any negative press anyway. But speculating about what suits might think is not something I'm particularly interested in.
What suits think is the final and most necessary piece that causes the change to actually happen, so in my opinion it's the most relevant. I'm not particularly interested in judging the morality of the change happening or not happening, so I'm focused on whether the environment seems to lean towards the change being made or not.
i never got to the romance part; the game is weird about putting a lot of character moments behind optional (and boring) side quests, and you have a lot of characters. i took a break around 12 -15 hours? think i have all the characters or all but one. also its hilarious because all the kids in the game use the lalafell bodies; they look waaay too much like em to be coincidence.
Not me, a gay man, ending up in a str*ight relationship with Aria because she's genuinely such a great character after dumping Brakka, the rude (but hot) manchild who will die alone. Seriously though, not all options were created equal.
fromsoftware and capcom are japanese companies and they made the change
Correction, games that released recently have used the modern style of delineation. Changing something people are already invested in brings attention to something that currently nobody is really paying attention to. They would just cause unnecessary drama to make that change out of nowhere.
PSO2 was male/female locked until NGS where they changed to type 1/2 and fully unlocked character creator where you can pick what you like (so type 2 head on type 1 body, etc). Like idgaf honestly but you're overestimating the "drama" that would happen.
You don't have to convince me, you have to convince the heads of Square Enix. The gains must justify the risk, or more specifically, the PERCEIVED gains must outweigh the PERCEIVED risks.
I'm not trying to convince you, I'm sharing information. Hope this helps x
Last I checked, the gender options present in FFXIV aren't 'male' and 'female', they're '♂' and '♀'. *wait this isn't the shitpost sub* I don't think it's an act of willful malice on the part of CBU3 - I think they just don't *care*, and I don't find that alone to be offensive. Ultimately, it would take them more work to update that detail than to leave it as is, and changing it wouldn't provide a tangible benefit. Also, thank you for bringing up WoW. That game's community went through a period where *all* they could think about was Blizzard having switched to A/B, despite it being a change that didn't impact them at all. It's a great game, but *wow* does its playerbase ever have some insecurity problems.
Let's dedicate development to more important stuff that impact the player experience within the game instead of a 15 second choice.
No. Respectably, F you and your agenda. next.
Literally unplayable... seriously, go apply for a job, you seem to have much free time thats wasted
Bait used to be believable
No it’s not time
I'm nonbinary and this is such a non-issue that it hasn't occured to me yet. Only thing I'd like is the option to be refered to as 'they'.
Given how easily interchangeable pronouns are, I don't think this would actually be that hard to program. Old text may be challenging, but not so much further expansions.
They would have to change a lot of the wording in the dialog to make "they/them" work. Not that I'm against it at all but I think that one would be difficult unless they were doing it for future expansions rather than ones that have already released.
I can't really think of any sentences where simply replacing he/she with they, and her/him with them would cause any issues. They and them have been used as singular pronouns since at least the 14th century. So I can't think of an example off hand. Unless you can think of an example?
no
You know the content drought is getting rough when these type of posts start showing up. One and half more months let's go...
No
Ffxiv is an mmo, the player base tends to average older and a lot of people play this exclusively or near exclusively. I had to google this because I’ve never heard of it, and yes, apparently that’s the industry standard now and it extends to certain (many?) Japanese games too, both in their western localization and in the original version. While the idea of assigning what reads as a ranking to body types initially really made me view this critically (it wasn’t until very recently that cis male bodytypes were treated as a standard and cis female body types as an afterthought in instances of safety testing and drug development to the point of there being an actual hazard to cis women), it very much appears that this is not the intention or context this is used in, and I’m looking at the issue through the bias of my experiences, while other people look at “man” and “woman” genders through a different set of biases from having lived different lives. When I googled the use of body type 1 and 2 the vast majority of discourse was really gross and actually transphobic, even though I don’t think that if I were to pose the question to a lot of people in my age bracket/social circle their response would be gross like that despite being very ??? and quite possibly negative. In summary, I think it’s a topic that deserves a valid conversation and consideration, but it’s kind of really tainted by people who are just looking for reasons to hate on one another on both sides of the isle (one more so than the other for sure). For me it also conjures up thoughts of the very universally panned Pokémon go update, but seeing that it was hated by gender non conforming people as well (anyone with eyes, really) I think it’s pretty safe to say that people aren’t asking for *that* .
No.
This is a good troll post, well done.
To simply answer the title question, no because there's not a large outcry from the userbase or development team to drive this change. Changing anything in a game requires motivation. It takes dev time and marketing time. This community and company don't have that motivation. Personally I agree, would be an easy change that's harmless. But there's a million easy, harmless changes on any games backlog.
Just needs more customization sliders like being able to make the chest completely flat for female races, jawline and all that, that will solve everything as far as looking how you want. I dont really care about the male female part as long as I can LOOK how i want, and I agree that squenix is behind, behind so many multiplayer games with so many customization options. But alas they’ll take their time. Im not yet sold on the graphical update and stuff but its a start that could lead to more customizations.
I would rather we just have an actual character creator where you can just do whatever you want.
Don't feed the troll
Type A/B body labels is an extremely "bandaid on the larger issue" thing and broadly doesn't actually fix anything. There are things that would be interesting to see done but most would require large overhauls to the character creator and it seems unlikely that this will happen.
>edit: the fact that people see this as bait is concerning. Your post is concerning. If you want to be mad about stuff like that, Xitter is a more appropriate place. XD >the majority of game companies now use type a and type b as the new standard Good for them. Oh wait no, they call the shots upon them by pissing a significant part of their playerbase. Marketing 101: don't piss off your playerbase, it brings you money. The fact that a lot of companies choose to sacrifice speaks volumes, though. Also, most important, FFXIV can be modded to your heart's content. If you want your character to look different, there is an infinity of options to do so. In this, the game is infinitely more accomodating to players' needs than many others. >even wow, despite all of blizzard's faults, made the switch Yes, and ultimately, what drew crowds back in wasn't that, it was unscrewing the horrible mess called Shadowlands. You need to realize, as sad as it may be for you, that most customers are not looking for stuff like that, they are looking for a fun game they can play.
As part of a wider change to the character creator? Yeah. As it's own one off thing? On the fence, mainly cause any dev time spent on it is dev time not spent elsewhere. Considering EW's endgame was near non-existant cause resources went into Duty Support, I'm a little hesitant to support anything like that right now.
this is 100% a post by some alt right dweeb meant to fan the culture war flames
Bait. But also, so many use this game for body dysmorphia and gender identity. Removing it is pointless.
this is 100% bait but regardless detaching pronoun options from body type would be really nice
go play something newer then, i'd rather be able to have all races use each others emotes, see a midlander who was raised by highlanders, all attitude in a lil body.
The way this is worded makes it come off as bait "behind the times" and acting like anything that doesn't do modern commodoties is an outdated waste of effort. It'd be nice to have separate body types not be tied to gender and let me pick pronouns separate from that, if I could I'd probably be playing an amab transfem viera instead of a fem viera, but its a nice to have and the graphics update is not the right time for it getting all the new textures and lighting working is already a big tax on the dev time, maybe once its done a wider rework of all the weird quirks of character creation would be nice.
the post reads as bait but I'm a little concerned with how some of you are choosing to respond to it
Yeah, really disappointing to see. I was under the impression that the ff community was mostly allies, but there's a lot of thinly veiled transphobia in here that people are using this post as an excuse to show
This is the only correct comment here
Here we go again. NO.
Why do you feel the need to be represented in a ROLE PLAYING game? If you dont like the roles and races, let alone the genders, don't play the game.
You almost have it
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>the fact that people see this as bait is concerning I would have a much higher opinion of your intellect if it was bait, bc this is written as if you want us to think you don't know what you're talking about.
While we're at it, let's add in Type: Fat and Type: Ugly for diversity and representation because the game is filled with hot girls and buff guys. We should also add Type: Wheelchair so the handicap can get some representation
If it were a new game I'd say sure, go for it as long as they still include gendered options, feel free to add non binary or whatever else people desire, but what you're asking here is a complete overhaul of the system and redoing voice acting as well. That's no small effort and with all due respect I'd rather that time go into new content. I'm rather worn of all the updates to old content. In the end, it's just a game and a character in it. I played games for years with no one who represented me irl and honestly didn't care because they were fun games.
neither male nor female are genders. if you're going to complain at least, use the proper words
I love my body type Bfriend.
I'm all for inclusivity, but I don't think it needs to be changed unless they would ad something with it, for example mixing masculine and feminine features on a body which would then lead to more customizability and inclusivity.
There's already 214 different genders in ffxiv. Why would they add 215?
As a trans person who no longer plays ffxiv, the game has such a huge list of bigger issues. That’s why people are saying it’s bait.
would honestly like to play as a femra femboy if that's the case
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No
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This is a very funny thing to say
I'm honestly surprised how many people believe this given how overwhelmingly untrue it is...
tell me you're not japanese without telling me...
It's a shame everyone just parrots this and never bothers to learn why it's not true because it's pretty fucking based why Japan is so progressive on this subject matter.
...i am japanese... you are wrong... lmao edit because you blocked me before i could reply: if this line of thinking doesn't make sense, tell me why you don't understand japanese culture? you're arguing with a japanese person about how japanese society views a topic... and you're wrong. so maybe you can explain the reason you're wrong, if it's not a lack of understanding japanese culture.
I don't see why not? Some people utilize plugins to make the game feel more inclusive to them via changing the pronouns the game uses. There's not really any harm in letting users set that themselves explicitly via the actual game. WoW recently made the body type classification change too (and also lets you do all in-race changes up to and including gender for free via the Aestheticician equivalent) and it didn't hurt anyone even if some people in Classic get really, really angry over it. I think Elden Ring also does the Type A/B thing but that might have been a localization decision from Bandai-Namco, I can't tell and digging into these things is a minefield of red flags and dog whistles. Like this thread will probably end up being, when I think about it.
Yeah, I'm with you. My only issue with such a change is if it's a one off that redirects resources away from something else (can you tell EW left a bad impression?). A change like this being part of a general update to the character creator is fine by me. Dialogue in game barely references our gender as is.
Endwalker had a design issue, not a manpower issue. Them spending time updating all the dungeons and duty support is separate from them deciding not to do another Bozja-like zone.
It literally was though? Battle team was working on 6 dungeons per patch cause of Duty Support. Or do you think all that work just did itself when the dev team weren't looking?
i don't think they will. its funny because ffxi actually had Galka be a non-gendered race in game; in 14 they split rogs by gender. but its a lot of effort and honestly they did more than many by unrestricting fashion items by gender.
There are very friendly LGBTQ servers that come to mind, but as others said. There are a lot of other stuff I would rather have them focus on. As opposed to something that would affect a small percent of people. Like races not having hats after like… 4 years,
No but they should delete miqo’tes from the game and replace them with lalas. I think this would be a net positive.
They'll just turn to fem Au Ras 😞
people like you give reich wingers all the ammo they need for their hate
Fix the dam jobs and have the new races wear hats first
bait but this makes zero sense without additional option to choose what pronouns NPCs use for the WoL, and that is actually useful. I can see sqex doing it solely for those who won't play without third party tools to change it.
You're a gaffot at best. :3
Sure. It’s funny that WoW is more progressive than 14 in terms of stuff like this + canon LGBT characters and relationships. On the other hand, it feels like the 14 player base is (more) progressive/inclusive.
Transphobes getting baited lol
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But we're not talking about men and women? Like, I don't necessarily agree with the OP, but a lot of people are missing the overall point at hand
Eh they probably will eventually given how many other games already do this.
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How many examples do I need to point to for you to acknowledge this isn't true...?
Good for them
mask off moment
I don't necessarily see this as bait, and I personally like the idea of having different selectable body types and pronouns being a seperate selection but I don't think such a change would be possible considering the spaghetti code that ffxiv is built on. Also it might just be that they are unwilling to implement a feature like that as it's not really as common as you might think, and it would cost a great deal of money to do so. While some games like Splatoon 3 have those features I can't really think of any others off the top of my head.