Current Events > Final Fantasy XVI Developers: "Here's why there are no black people."

(+) Yeah! (+)

I've often wondered why we support it so much, particularly millennials? I guess growing up on anime when it really started taking off in the U.S.?

I've often wondered why we support it so much, particularly millennials? I guess growing up on anime when it really started taking off in the U.S.?

Apparently a lot of people hated the mid/end game of legion. Though BFA really should be on the list of hated stuff, cause Legion was pretty good.

I have played WoW for 18 years. Final Fantasy XIV has a much, much more story-focused approach. They spend time developing characters, building the world, setting up relationships and conflicts...and they actually pay off in an interesting and satisfying way. The gameplay is "similar" to WoW, but it's a disservice to say it's a rip-off.

Such a bad answer , he would have been better saying I dont want to.

as were most "wow killer" mmos of that time period (remember rift?)

I remember that WoW basically "borrowed" a number of features from Rift, yeah.

Let's be honest--I have loved WoW since its creation, but it's unfair to call every MMO a rip-off or clone of WoW. WoW made huge strides in the MMO space by streamlining the experience, but it also borrowed from those who came before and those who came after. A lot of things that WoW has now in the modern retail version are inventions from other games, or functionality that originally came from add-ons that got baked into the main game's UI.

In fact, WoW's current questing model of the "main campaign" quest chain comes directly from FFXIV, because players who like story wanted there to be a defined throughline to follow.

They all borrow from each other. They're not just explicitly copying WoW's format.

I remember that WoW basically "borrowed" a number of features from Rift, yeah.

Let's be honest--I have loved WoW since its creation, but it's unfair to call every MMO a rip-off or clone of WoW. WoW made huge strides in the MMO space by streamlining the experience, but it also borrowed from those who came before and those who came after. A lot of things that WoW has now in the modern retail version are inventions from other games, or functionality that originally came from add-ons that got baked into the main game's UI.

In fact, WoW's current questing model of the "main campaign" quest chain comes directly from FFXIV, because players who like story wanted there to be a defined throughline to follow.

They all borrow from each other. They're not just explicitly copying WoW's format.

Being a black fan of anything non-street/music/sports/BET related is tough AF bro

TBH, I don't know but I honestly wouldn't be surprised if there are. FF is well known across the whole world, but their main demograph will always be the Japanese and they gotta pander to them somehow. With that said, from looking at the devs answer, it would absolutely be dumb for him to answer that way and then sprinkle in an Asian character into the main cast or something.

to say that an mmo like ffxiv or rift or swtor wasnt directly imitating wow (something the ffxiv director even admits) is just disingenuous

You're backtracking a bit. I've agreed that FFXIV is definitely inspired in a lot of ways by WoW, but that wasn't what the argument was about. You explicitly said that FFXIV is a mediocre WoW clone, which it is neither mediocre nor a direct clone. It has the gameplay style and a lot of systems in common with WoW, but it's not a direct clone.

You also said that "Thing is the FF fanboys didn't play WoW, so they don't get to see it", but I have played both games and there are significant differences between them. Final Fantasy actually has good story and character writing, for example. If you've played WoW at any time since WoD, you'd know that the lore has become a disaster. People begged Blizzard not to focus on Sylvanas for three expansions in a row, but they did it anyway and still expected us to care.

Thankfully, Dragonflight seems to be going back to subject matter that's actually cool and feels like World of Warcraft again. I'm looking forward to that.

On the note of Draognflight...another thing that FFXIV does is Job switching. You can play the same character as multiple classes, or you can choose to make new characters as well if that's what you want to do. That's a huge difference which makes playing multiple classes a breeze. A feature of that job system is profession leveling--which also comes with profession equipment. You can get lost in the profession system of FFXIV so easily by making entire gear sets for it.

You know what WoW is implementing for Dragonflight? Profession equipment. Another feature that FFXIV executed well, and now WoW is borrowing it.

The MMO genre evolves together. To call any one game a "clone" of another is to miss the nuance that goes into the MMO space as a whole. You're right when you say that other MMOs have totally different styles, but for the tab-targeting ability-bar combat MMO subset, WoW and FFXIV are both excellent examples that can hold their own against any other in the field.

yer talkin to the wrong poster homie

That wouldn't mean no PoC, that would mean that the PoC present are all in inferior positions

That would just make people scream even more on social media.

Why don't they do that with black characters? Because they don't want to. Simple as that. With that said, a lot of Japanese media is definitely getting a lot better with Black representations... I mean they stopped drawing/animating them to having the stereotypical black face...

.. you could probably count on a single hand foreign outsiders who weren't traders in medieval europe...

who fucking gives a fucking shit what the racial makeup of 1400 England was.

I wouldn't want a Shakespeare play to have an all white cast just because it's "accurate." no one fucking gives a shit about that stuff.

race isn't even real, it's a social construct.

the benefits of a diverse cast would outweigh the historical accuracy angle.

they CHOSE the setting too. it's just so full of shit, and all too typical of major japanese developers.

making blizzard look downright progressive, square.

so they are making the game they want, not the game the blue checkmarks want

sounds good to me

As an Asian myself, in the past some people would go like "shouldn't you be happy you guys are so represented in today's media?" And I go "you're only represented as an asian in today's media if you're Chinese, Korean, or Japanese". I'm Vietnamese and almost anytime we're represented, we're either drug dealers in an action flick or the Viet Cong/villagers during the Vietnam war in a historical piece.

At this point I kind of stopped caring though and just let people do what they want with their art. If I was creative enough I could probably go into the field, but I'm not so I can't make it happen. At the end of the day you just kind of have to accept the artistic value of the devs for the games. It doesn't mean we can't complain about it, but it is what it is.

Calm down. this amount of patronizing against the neo-libs won't change anything if anything it'll only make them feel more right.

Are we really going to boycott a game just because there's no Black, Asian, or even Latino representation?

Are we really going to boycott a game just because there's no Black, Asian, or even Latino representation?

Are we really going to boycott a game just because there's no Black, Asian, or even Latino representation?