The Men FFXIV Needs

Just saying.... the only memorable part of FF15 was Gladiolus pushing that car.

It's out there, if you want it :p

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Originally Posted by Ayer2015

Just saying.... the only memorable part of FF15 was Gladiolus pushing that car.

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To be fair, the time jump to see the the overworld go from normal to World of Darkness was pretty sweet. I do feel bad about the team of XV considering how much they had to cut out of the game and relegate it to OVAs, dlc, ect. Though I don't know if the current devs can do "manly" men, the closest we got was Gaius during the Weapon storyline and I wish they did more like that.

Honestly, I feel like they need to work on the actual face-sculpts, as well. The male viera are a dozen steps above the other races in terms of how well-sculpted their faces look in comparison.
It's even jarring compared to female viera, which are also a step above other races. I'd love for them to set aside some dev resources to re-sculpt all the face options (obviously don't change their actual appearances!).

Otherwise if they don't re-sculpt the faces, imagine them adding fresh facial options to the older races, with the quality of male viera. It would look... really odd.

I concur, give us eyebrows already

Here are some additional male references:


Nikolaj Coster Waldau (Jaime Lannister – Game of Thrones)

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EA7xFmiWwAE9h7n.png

https://kvikmyndir.is/wp-content/upl...e-1024x682.jpg

Ben Donnelly (Influencer)

https://i.pinimg.com/564x/a6/e9/b6/a...fa2db98d32.jpg

https://64.media.tumblr.com/cfbc987e...v4so1_1280.jpg

Colin O'Donoghue (Captain Hook – Once Upon a Time)

https://www.thefamouspeople.com/prof...donoghue-1.jpg

https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/e1f...pjpg&auto=webp

Richard Madden (Robb Stark – Game of Thrones)

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/...wMDI@._V1_.jpg

https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/i...rk-850x560.jpg

Im still crying over the bunny boys… it was nothing what I imagined let me tell you that.

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Originally Posted by SassyAssassin

Im still crying over the bunny boys… it was nothing what I imagined let me tell you that.

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That's for sure. We fought tooth and nail to get more masculine options in the male viera thread.

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Originally Posted by SturmChurro

That's for sure. We fought tooth and nail to get more masculine options in the male viera thread.

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Not even a miqo'te dad cat face equivalent. :(

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Originally Posted by Lauront

Not even a miqo'te dad cat face equivalent. :(

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Miqo'te men literally look more masculine than male viera. It's so sad. Such great masculine concepts too..

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Originally Posted by MilkieTea

Honestly, I feel like they need to work on the actual face-sculpts, as well. The male viera are a dozen steps above the other races in terms of how well-sculpted their faces look in comparison.
It's even jarring compared to female viera, which are also a step above other races. I'd love for them to set aside some dev resources to re-sculpt all the face options (obviously don't change their actual appearances!).

Otherwise if they don't re-sculpt the faces, imagine them adding fresh facial options to the older races, with the quality of male viera. It would look... really odd.

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It's not just the face model but also the textures. They just look like they're higher quality compared to the original races despite being the same resolution. Best example would be female Viera and female Highlanders, both have the same texture resolution but while Viera look clean you can count the pixels on female Highlander faces. Maybe they had access to compression with less loss in image quality for Viera, who knows.

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Originally Posted by SturmChurro

Miqo'te men literally look more masculine than male viera. It's so sad. Such great masculine concepts too..

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Aye. At least they didn't embrace some of the creepier suggestions to have male viera resemble children.

I'll always support requests for more character customization, and that includes requests for masculine options. I think highlanders need better face options as well as eyebrows, better facial hair options, etc...
That being said, I'm glad the graphics team didn't go down the super masculine route for male viera. A few people were requesting something like that in the male viera thread, but in my opinion, it's good that was largely ignored in favor of a more elegant and slender type of character model. The male's min/max height being shorter than the female's min/max height was a pleasant surprise.

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Originally Posted by Senn

I'll always support requests for more character customization, and that includes requests for masculine options. I think highlanders need better face options as well as eyebrows, better facial hair options, etc...
That being said, I'm glad the graphics team didn't go down the super masculine route for male viera. A few people were requesting something like that in the male viera thread, but in my opinion, it's good that was largely ignored in favor of a more elegant and slender type of character model. The male's min/max height being shorter than the female's min/max height was a pleasant surprise.

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I play male viera and I'm really happy with the route they chose. It's much more unique that just another very masculine males/very feminine female combo, like almost every fantasy game does with every race. I'm not necessarily against the more advanced sliders some people have suggested to let people have more options for body types, etc, across all races but I think having male viera canonically more slender with softer features is artistically more unique and interesting than going the expected route of extreme sexual dimorphism that I typically expect from video games races. They're not even what anyone would reasonably call androgynous, imo. Their bodies are more masculine/muscular than most men in real life. Some people just have very high bars for "masculinity" in games.

Well, it's like Lauront was saying, they didn't even do a "dad" face, like male miqo'te, and pretty much every other male race in the game has. It would have at least been a nice singular option for players who wanted that more masculine face for male viera. Like Theodric was saying, some players wanted a more extreme version of male viera than we received. I know, generally, a lot of players wanted them more feminine or androgynous, and shorter, shorter than minimum height male miqo'te. So SE did compromise a little bit.

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Originally Posted by leanansi

I play male viera and I'm really happy with the route they chose. It's much more unique that just another very masculine males/very feminine female combo, like almost every fantasy game does with every race. I'm not necessarily against the more advanced sliders some people have suggested to let people have more options for body types, etc, across all races but I think having male viera canonically more slender with softer features is artistically more unique and interesting than going the expected route of extreme sexual dimorphism that I typically expect from video games races. They're not even what anyone would reasonably call androgynous, imo. Their bodies are more masculine/muscular than most men in real life. Some people just have very high bars for "masculinity" in games.

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I agree that it's definitely much more unique than the standard masculine look for men. And not only is it unique, but I think they look great, too. Male viera definitely give off that bishounen aesthetic or k-pop style that's popular nowadays and I wouldn't want them any other way. It just fits so well.
And I'm with you on the sliders. I don't think we'll ever get them, but I'd love to have them nonetheless. However, I do recall an interview with Yoshi P stating that rather than adding options to change the shape of a character model's body, they would rather just add a new race entirely.

The simple fact of the matter is that prior to the introduction to male Viera, there was no model that satisfied the fantasy feel of a sort of high elf male. Male Elezen, for numerous reasons, were not delivering on this front. However rather than update the widely controversial model for male Elezen (and by extent female Eezen), they chose to transpose that fantasy onto male Viera.

The ideal scenario would have been to implement the improved body type for male Viera to Elezen and gone with a look that sits somewhere between Elezen and Au Ra for male Viera, but that did not occur. I love what we got in them because I can finally play a decent wood elf but when it comes to traditional masculine aesthetics, the game does not provide sufficient options. It would have been nice to see things like facial hair or even the reuse of the highlander build in male Viera, but short of petitioning for another race addition the only thing we can hope for is that these older models are one day revisited.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

Aye. At least they didn't embrace some of the creepier suggestions to have male viera resemble children.

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Yikes! Good on the creative team for not going down that route.

On that note, I do like the height difference male Viera have compared to female Viera. I think rabbits in real life are like that, with a female rabbit being larger on average than a male rabbit of the same breed.

Still, that doesn't mean male Viera can't be manly, of course. There are plenty of short, manly kings out there.

EDIT: Also, I know that male Viera's height range isn't necessarily "short", but I know how a good chunk of people wish they were taller.

I'm not entirely convinced that Viera need to be more masculine at all. Does every race need to be able to span both extremes? On one hand, if you can make massively ripped, bearded, chiseled jaw Viera men and slight, soft featured, pretty boy roes then that's a wide variety of character creator options and you are allowed a greater amount of creative freedoms. On the other hand, it strips away everything that makes the races unique from each other. It's really down to whether individually unique races or the full span of creative freedoms when creating your character is more important. I don't think Viera specifically need to be made more masculine when there are plenty of other masculine races that aren't being made more feminine, though. It's not really about "variety" at that point, but just wanting every male race to be very masculine. I support ideas like adding the notorious eyebrows so people will be happier with the masculine options available, but I don't think everything needs to be hyper-masculine. Viera add variety and are a unique race in themselves. I don't think they really need to look like every other male character in video games.

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Originally Posted by leanansi

I'm not entirely convinced that Viera need to be more masculine at all. Does every race need to be able to span both extremes? On one hand, if you can make massively ripped, bearded, chiseled jaw Viera men and slight, soft featured, pretty boy roes then that's a wide variety of character creator options and you are allowed a greater amount of creative freedoms. On the other hand, it strips away everything that makes the races unique from each other. It's really down to whether individually unique races or the full span of creative freedoms when creating your character is more important. I don't think Viera specifically need to be made more masculine when there are plenty of other masculine races that aren't being made more feminine, though. It's not really about "variety" at that point, but just wanting every male race to be very masculine. I support ideas like adding the notorious eyebrows so people will be happier with the masculine options available, but I don't think everything needs to be hyper-masculine. Viera add variety and are a unique race in themselves. I don't think they really need to look like every other male character in video games.

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Honestly, a lot of the concerns addressed here could be easily fixed with a few tweaks in customization, namely a muscle tone slider (for both genders and all races) and more/better facial hair options.

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Originally Posted by leanansi

I'm not entirely convinced that Viera need to be more masculine at all. Does every race need to be able to span both extremes? On one hand, if you can make massively ripped, bearded, chiseled jaw Viera men and slight, soft featured, pretty boy roes then that's a wide variety of character creator options and you are allowed a greater amount of creative freedoms. On the other hand, it strips away everything that makes the races unique from each other. It's really down to whether individually unique races or the full span of creative freedoms when creating your character is more important. I don't think Viera specifically need to be made more masculine when there are plenty of other masculine races that aren't being made more feminine, though. It's not really about "variety" at that point, but just wanting every male race to be very masculine. I support ideas like adding the notorious eyebrows so people will be happier with the masculine options available, but I don't think everything needs to be hyper-masculine. Viera add variety and are a unique race in themselves. I don't think they really need to look like every other male character in video games.

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I really don't think it's too much to ask to have a facial option like the dadcat for the miqo'te, which also exists for the moon cattes, who aren't even exposed to the same adverse conditions as male viera are, who exist as solitary hunters barring occasional contact with their mentees. That plus better facial hair options (including stubble), since they already have those but they're just not that good. They are going to upgrade the graphics anyway, and possibly the CC in the future, and adding these options won't make the existing facial picks vanish, so I fail to see the problem. Doesn't need to be anything like the highlander faces.

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Originally Posted by ronibosch

Yikes! Good on the creative team for not going down that route.

On that note, I do like the height difference male Viera have compared to female Viera. I think rabbits in real life are like that, with a female rabbit being larger on average than a male rabbit of the same breed.

Still, that doesn't mean male Viera can't be manly, of course. There are plenty of short, manly kings out there.

EDIT: Also, I know that male Viera's height range isn't necessarily "short", but I know how a good chunk of people wish they were taller.

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They had alternative options to approach it, like giving them a wider height range like femroes enjoy, which I think would've pleased both those who wanted them to be quite short and those who wanted taller ones. BTW you might want to refer to the below:

https://twitter.com/YasumiMatsuno/st...13786467852289

Another great example of the sort of male customization options I'd like to see added is something along the lines of Chris Redfield from Resident Evil 8. A strong build with an attractive masculine face, if only we could make something like this with highlanders:

https://mp1st.com/wp-content/uploads...llagechris.jpg

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They had alternative options to approach it, like giving them a wider height range like femroes enjoy, which I think would've pleased both those who wanted them to be quite short and those who wanted taller ones. BTW you might want to refer to the below:

https://twitter.com/YasumiMatsuno/st...13786467852289

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I don't understand what you're suggesting with the link.
Btw, sorry if I'm sounding sarcastic; I really don't understand.
If you are referring to me bringing up the sexual dimorphism of rabbits, I'm referencing a point someone brought up in a past Viera thread to explain why female Viera shouldn't be tiny like female Au Ra and Miqo'te. It's cool if they don't follow how things are in real life; this is a fantasy game, after all. I just like the little (possibly unintentional) height difference between female and male Viera.

If you're not aware of who that is, he is the creator of the setting in which the Viera originate, and thus also the race itself. I just brought it up because that argument came up a bit, as you mention, but he does not consider it to be a relevant point.

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Originally Posted by Lauront

If you're not aware of who that is, he is the creator of the setting in which the Viera originate, and thus also the race itself. I just brought it up because that argument came up a bit, as you mention, but he does not consider it to be a relevant point.

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Oh, cool! I had a feeling he was, before looking him up.
Then their heights were just a coincidence. My apologies.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

Another great example of the sort of male customization options I'd like to see added is something along the lines of Chris Redfield from Resident Evil 8. A strong build with an attractive masculine face, if only we could make something like this with highlanders:

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That's great but i also wish something like this https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/...93/605/4ec.jpg

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Originally Posted by HanWenqing

That's great but i also wish something like this https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/...93/605/4ec.jpg

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+1 from me

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

Another great example of the sort of male customization options I'd like to see added is something along the lines of Chris Redfield from Resident Evil 8. A strong build with an attractive masculine face, if only we could make something like this with highlanders:

https://mp1st.com/wp-content/uploads...llagechris.jpg

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Chris is pretty great - and he has a pretty striking appearance in every Resident Evil game that he has shown up in over the years. I'd definitely like the ability to create a character that looks like him.

I know a fair few people who haven't bothered checking out FFXIV after realising that the character creator is so limited when compared to many other games out there.

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Originally Posted by HanWenqing

snipped because large image

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I mean, kind of ironic to include Revolver Ocelot, a person who in his teens was a borderline twink who meowed to summon his pals - and in his middle age was a cowboy cosplayer.

The Man FFXIV Needs

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/95...1-8e95c57789a9

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Originally Posted by Zanarkand-Ronso

The Man FFXIV Needs

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/95...1-8e95c57789a9

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My president!

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Originally Posted by Eldtagg

My president!

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Humanity's president !

I'd like to voice renewed support for this thread having seen the two new hairstyles on offer as rewards in the Island Sanctuary. I'm still very eager to see some new short, masculine hairstyles added to the game.

Hunky western men yes please. I was rly let down with male viera options being so much more femme than I was looking for. They look cute but I want something rugged!

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Originally Posted by Aelin_Ashryver

Hunky western men yes please. I was rly let down with male viera options being so much more femme than I was looking for. They look cute but I want something rugged!

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That was what the people asked for.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

That was what the people asked for.

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People asked for both really, but they didn't even really go for an older or more masculine face this time around, as I was saying in previous posts in this thread (I think it was this thread). Even miqo'te males have better masculine options.

The island sanctuary hairstyles were both underwhelming but the male one was a total downgrade in terms of texture quality compared to the female version. Enough with the gender neutral hairstyles already for goodness sake. How can they continue pumping them out when there is clear and direct feedback that we are sick of them?

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

The island sanctuary hairstyles were both underwhelming but the male one was a total downgrade in terms of texture quality compared to the female version. Enough with the gender neutral hairstyles already for goodness sake. How can they continue pumping them out when there is clear and direct feedback that we are sick of them?

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Isn't the male one the guy from heavensward relics hairstyle? So.. An existing one.

Ardashir.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Isn't the male one the guy from heavensward relics hairstyle? So.. An existing one.

Ardashir.

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Isn't Ardashir a character that is very feminine/androgynous looking where his overall design is concerned? I don't think he's what people have in mind when they're asking for more masculine hairstyles and character customisation options.

For clarity, here's Ardashir:

https://i.imgur.com/vR5abYX.jpg

The only people who I have seen ask for his hairstyle are women.