Male Viera as a playable character! show your support

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Originally Posted by Senn

Of course no one is "forcing" them. Not like they are being held at gun point. I don't think Amnmaat meant it in the literal sense, either? Though it is him we're talking about, so...
Like Yoshi P said, due to player feedback, they "had" to add them. Or else people would wonder why they didn't add viera.

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He could have done a better job at conveying that if that was the point. But who knows if he might try to piggyback off you since you came to his rescue.
Its happened in past convos Ive had with others.
But regardless

https://i.imgur.com/qab474N.gif

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Originally Posted by DBriggs304

The genders aren't missing. We knew we weren't getting them and they did exactly what they said they would.

The controversy is on the players expectation not the actions of the devs.

It won't stop or be affected...the way you wish it would

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Devs never told the consumers that we weren't getting male Viera before the product reveal of Shadowbringers around mid March 2019. You can't tell us to not set expectations when you didn't give us any.

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Originally Posted by Amnmaat

https://i.imgur.com/qab474N.gif


Devs never told the consumers that we weren't getting male Viera before the product reveal of Shadowbringers around mid March 2019. You can't tell us to not set expectations when you didn't give us any.

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We knew well before it came out. Plenty of time to not buy it or more than enough time to get refunded for pre-orders.

The expectations were yours.
Not theirs.

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Originally Posted by DBriggs304

We knew well before it came out. Plenty of time to not buy it or more than enough time to get refunded for pre-orders.

The expectations were yours.
Not theirs.

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Not true, your starting argument was that missing genders is not a problem. My retort was that it was and is a problem, a problem they created for themselves. Furthermore, they alluded to why they added (female) Viera, because the fans would question why they didn't add them. So it's not a expectations problem, it's a problem they created themselves. When we asked for Viera we asked for both genders.

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Originally Posted by Aluja89

I know that, I'm talking about the people that wanted Viera. They only know them as female so where did this expectation come from?

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I think the expectation ultimately comes from them adding the missing genders from 1.0, male Miqote and Female Roes.

Male miqote, are lore wise, supposed to be super rare in an equivalent rate compared to Male Viera. And yet they added them. They could have stuck with the transplanted lore from 11 but they didn't they did their own thing. They correct this gender lock with the rebirth of 14 and so many people assumed it would be a relic of 1.0. And when they added Au'Ra both genders were preasent.

Now there is info going around saying something
like that Yoshi-p stating that gender locks were a mistake, but i have yet to find the source, i believe it was probably during a live letter, specifically the one where the genders were announced, I have no idea which one it was. but I cant be sure.

Funnily enough In my search for primary sources on said supposed gender lock comment I found that 1.0 players were having very similar conversations about Male Miqote and female Roes, very similar arguments even.

Like people useing ff11 lore to justify their absence, that no one wants to play giant women, etc. It was actually pretty amazing how reflective it was.

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Originally Posted by Senn

So you think the cutting back on content and getting additional funding are signs that character customization might get expanded? Well, I'm not sure if that is the case, but if it is, that'd be pretty nice.

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Not necessarily that it is evidence of it happening, but it is a solid consideration. I explained this a little while back but the TLDR is take stock of the situation for the dev teams (Covid Aside). More money is reportedly now being funneled into FFXIV, they are expanding their dev team as well, and they decided to change release and content cycle (again prior to covid slow downs). Theyve also, if youve noticed, started pushing MogStation a bit harder htis last year. Like or hate Mogstation, the funds from there do go directly into FFXIV and no other place. Then you have teh Nier Raids. Unlike previous raids where theyd have to create assets from scratch, pretty sure this time around theyre importing some of it which cuts down work load. From a development end, the Nier Raids are probably not as development heavy for what they are by comparison to previous 24 mans.

Furthermore, there are plenty of criticisms about how Viera and Hrothgar were implemented that they know are apparent. Both feel semi 'unfinished' customization wise compared to other races. Forget helmets and headwear, the simple fact hrothgar and viera have so few hairstyles and require a fanta for Hrothgar to really change what you got is an issue. And they have made no real issue to fix both even though that this is an issue that is pretty well criticized by virtually everyone, here and overseas. If you pick up more devs, cut back on how much you have to push out, and recieve more funding - and this is all before pandemic lockdowns - what exactly could they be working on? As I said, character customization is a big thing people have been asking for consistently, and with Viera and Hrothgar having model issues, and the off sexes still being requested/desired atleast by a vocal minority, one of the few things that actually makes sense what theyre spending their time on (beyond regular development ish), would be reworking their character customization engine as it is the engine that is the source of a lot of these problems. Cant add new races cause of how the game handles character model armor which is down stream from the engine. Same issues with the Viera and Hrothgar, same issues with the character customization issues itself. Its all related to the character creation engine. It's a Herculean task to be sure, but if they were doing that, itd solve a lot of issues long term and be a big boost to the game.

Now this is all speculation on my part, but of all things I dont think the dev team is sitting there sipping champagne and twiddling their thumbs while they rake in all the extra cash and free up dev time. These are teh devs that added some headwear to Hrothgar and Viera when it was initially planned by YoshiP that wouldnt even happen. I think they want to see the game be successful and that if they want the game to stay fresh, so it is only a matter of time before the character customization engine would have to be addressed.

Well not much of a TLDR but I hope that explained my thoughts. Maybe we'll get something completely different, who knows ultimately. But Im decently optimistic that character customization will probably get an update come next xpac. It's just a bunch of small things that add into something.

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Originally Posted by Amnmaat

Not true, your starting argument was that missing genders is not a problem. My retort was that it was and is a problem, a problem they created for themselves. Furthermore, they alluded to why they added (female) Viera, because the fans would question why they didn't add them. So it's not a expectations problem, it's a problem they created themselves. When we asked for Viera we asked for both genders.

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Missing genders aren't a problem. Because they aren't missing aka we knew we weren't getting them. In more than enough time. We asked for Viera. We got Viera. We asked for Hrothgar. We got Hrothgar.

How could it have been asked for both genders when your entire premise was they strategically waited to tell us until the end?

Your entire defense and reasoning has been deflated. You are grasping at anything now to fit your narrative.

Aka...Your Expectations.

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Originally Posted by DBriggs304

Missing genders aren't a problem. Because they aren't missing aka we knew we weren't getting them. In more than enough time. We asked for Viera. We got Viera. We asked for Hrothgar. We got Hrothgar.

How could it have been asked for both genders when your entire premise was they strategically waited to tell us until the end?

Your entire defense and reasoning has been deflated. You are grasping at anything now to fit your narrative.

Aka...Your Expectations.

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Umm, maybe you can provide some source on a few of these. IIRC I do remember people askign for viera...but not necessarily Hrothgar. At least not in big numbers. And when people generally ask for a new race, it is encompassing both male and female sides, not just one. It may not be explicitely stated, but expected among players, particularly if there is a soft precedent for it already in the game. Which is also why some of the hype happened the way it did. Again, they showed female viera, played footsy about whether we would get male viera (which would be a FF First and be huge news in general for the franchise as a whole, not just the game) and didnt say nah to it. Fans ran with it cause it wasnt a huge jump to expect it.

Now maybe people did get out over their skis on this, but you shouldnt sit there and call them unrealistic for what they expected.

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Originally Posted by Kazran

Now there is info going around saying something
like that Yoshi-p stating that gender locks were a mistake, but i have yet to find the source, i believe it was probably during a live letter, specifically the one where the genders were announced, I have no idea which one it was. but I cant be sure.

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Not in those exact words, but Yoshi P said the lack of male miqo'te and female roegadyn was a problem.

MAC: In adding female Roegadyn and male Miqo'te into Final Fantasy XIV, how are you going to explain adding them in? Any other new changes to the races in game?

NY: The lack of female Roegadyn and male Miqo'te was a problem from the beginning. Rather than emphasizing the reason for introducing them, we're seeing it as a way to start fresh with every race having a male and female option available. While we are not considering new playable races until future expansion packs, A Realm Reborn will feature many more options for character customization.

Source


Edit:
It is possible Yoshi P did say something along the lines of the missing genders (female highlander/roegadyn, male miqo'te) were a problem in a live letter. Unfortunately, it's hard to find. If I find it, I'll post it.
However, I think it's reasonable to assume that, at the time, the general consensus was that the missing genders were considered a problem that needed to be corrected. Not an interview or anything like that, but this article does give some perspective. Link to article

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Originally Posted by Melichoir

Umm, maybe you can provide some source on a few of these. IIRC I do remember people askign for viera...but not necessarily Hrothgar. At least not in big numbers. And when people generally ask for a new race, it juis encompassing both male and female sides, not just one. It may not be explicitely stated, but expected among players, particularly if there is a soft precedent for it already in the game. Which is also why some of the hype happened the way it did. Again, they showed female viera, played footsy about whether we would get male viera (which would be a FF First and be huge news in general for the franchise as a whole, not just the game) and didnt say nah to it. Fans ran with it cause it wasnt a huge jump to expect it.

Now maybe people did get out over their skis on this, but you shouldnt sit there and call them unrealistic for what they expected.

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Its unrealistic when you know what is coming (as we did) yet expect something totally different (as people are doing) and then take the position of not being given said knowledge in the first place.

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Originally Posted by DBriggs304

Its unrealistic when you know what is coming (as we did) yet expect something totally different (as people are doing) and then take the position of not being given said knowledge in the first place.

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What is your argument, exactly? Just because SE was transparent about their intentions doesn't mean the playerbase has to suddenly be receptive of them. People have been asking for male Viera almost the moment it was announced that it was female only; They are entirely within their scope to do this.

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Originally Posted by Warkupo

What is your argument, exactly? Just because SE was transparent about their intentions doesn't mean the playerbase has to suddenly be receptive of them. People have been asking for male Viera almost the moment it was announced that it was female only; They are entirely within their scope to do this.

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Point proven...

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Originally Posted by DBriggs304

Its unrealistic when you know what is coming (as we did) yet expect something totally different (as people are doing) and then take the position of not being given said knowledge in the first place.

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We didnt know it was coming as it was. They had not specified at the time of Viera reveal that there would not be male viera. Prior to that they had not mentioned that it would be two different races split like this. If Im missing something where they specifically said either that we would be getting two different races split like this, then no, we didnt know it 'wasnt coming'. Unless your point relies on lore from another FF Title. And if we get into that, then we are going to have to really get into why the whole Viera lore doesnt even function within FFXIV as it currently is, particularly if you wanted to introduce male viera, it can be done with literally 1 line of dialogue and it would be incredibly believable and logical given FFXIV's world building and background lore and context.

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Originally Posted by Warkupo

What is your argument, exactly? Just because SE was transparent about their intentions doesn't mean the playerbase has to suddenly be receptive of them. People have been asking for male Viera almost the moment it was announced that it was female only; They are entirely within their scope to do this.

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I already said this earlier, but I'd like to emphasize it again: I've made a viera thread requesting both male and female viera about four years ago. If I'm being honest, I have wanted female and male viera included in this game much longer than that - even before the official race poll. I have been wanting their inclusion for almost a decade now.

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Originally Posted by Melichoir

We didnt know it was coming as it was. They had not specified at the time of Viera reveal that there would not be male viera. Prior to that they had not mentioned that it would be two different races split like this. If Im missing something where they specifically said either that we would be getting two different races split like this, then no, we didnt know it 'wasnt coming'. Unless your point relies on lore from another FF Title. And if we get into that, then we are going to have to really get into why the whole Viera lore doesnt even function within FFXIV as it currently is, particularly if you wanted to introduce male viera, it can be done with literally 1 line of dialogue and it would be incredibly believable and logical given FFXIV's world building and background lore and context.

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We knew well before product release and anytime we think Viera, we think Fran.

We knew.
We all knew.

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Originally Posted by Senn

Not in those exact words, but Yoshi P said the lack of male miqo'te and female roegadyn was a problem.

MAC: In adding female Roegadyn and male Miqo'te into Final Fantasy XIV, how are you going to explain adding them in? Any other new changes to the races in game?

NY: The lack of female Roegadyn and male Miqo'te was a problem from the beginning. Rather than emphasizing the reason for introducing them, we're seeing it as a way to start fresh with every race having a male and female option available. While we are not considering new playable races until future expansion packs, A Realm Reborn will feature many more options for character customization.

Source

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Thank you so much for posting this source! Now when peeps ask for it i can give it :D

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Originally Posted by Kazran

Thank you so much for posting this source! Now when peeps ask for it i can give it :D

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It might not be the answer you're after, though. The question being asked was how they were going to explain their "sudden" appearance in FFXIV, which was apparently a problem for the XIV team (they did try to get by this issue by having Merlwyb appear). He was not saying "this was a mistake and we won't do it again."

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Originally Posted by Nestama

It might not be the answer you're after, though. The question being asked was how they were going to explain their "sudden" appearance in FFXIV, which was apparently a problem for the XIV team (they did try to get by this issue by having Merlwyb appear). He was not saying "this was a mistake and we won't do it again."

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It more in the vain that Yoshi P saw the gender lock and could have kept it, but didn't. Wanting to start fresh going forward. That they were in favor of more character customization

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Originally Posted by Kazran

...

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Some more stuff I found:

Q: On the upper left hand corner of the white board, "Female Highlander", "Male Miqo'te", "Female Roegadyn" and "Must Have". Does this mean that new races could be added?
A: It's more like something we must have in the game and it's a meeting log from when we were talking about adding them as soon as possible. After we calculate the cost, we will first add the things that are must have. After that, we would like to move on to introducing other races such as Demi Human and Dragons.

So the missing genders were considered "must have". It seems like, at the time, the missing genders were given priority over new races.
Dragon refers to au ra, and demi human most likely referring to reptilian or mammalian demi-beastmen.

Source
Video

Yas! More primary sources! Thank you!

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Originally Posted by Kazran

It more in the vain that Yoshi P saw the gender lock and could have kept it, but didn't. Wanting to start fresh going forward. That they were in favor of more character customization

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Very true, but the "problem from the start" is still being seen as a lore response to me, since 1.0 had a noticeable lack of them. Though I guess male Miqo'te could easily get away with this considering their lore. Female Roegadyn and female Highlanders, though (which are far more common in ARR than male Miqo'te as NPC's, haha)...

There's also his other 2013 response.
https://i.redd.it/ca1q5hg9ntn21.png

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Originally Posted by DBriggs304

We knew well before product release and anytime we think Viera, we think Fran.

We knew.
We all knew.

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Not gonna act like I'm following any of this beyond the bare min (Did read one of Melichoir's post about resources and think it's a bit short sighted to think they simply want to make more CC options. IMO it's bigger, it's them working on a PSO2:NG level next step for the game that would include CC but that's off topic) but I will say that Viera desire seems to be more of a fantasy driven thing.

Looking at how common it was last year to find people whining about Viera being Viera made it clear to me that some number just wanted Bunny Neko girls. (As in the "Why aren't the white ones shorter!?!?" where people convinced themselves that the cute art style in some BS comparison made by a fan meant that there was a shorter, cuter, whiter version that they could use when the race is legit tall af and commonly brown. Again, when you think of Viera you think of Fran).

It's pretty much the reason for the "male Viera body type war" that was big enough that YP legit had so say "No, we will never make child-like Player characters".
It's some kinda combo of projection and willful ignorance imo. People have been pointing out for years YP's line about not doing Male Viera and people kinda convinced themselves that they promised to never do 1 gender races again regardless... like this vvv

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Originally Posted by Kazran

Thank you so much for posting this source! Now when peeps ask for it i can give it :D

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To put this in context the game had ...
Lala -Male/ Female
Middie-Male/ Female
Elezen- Male/ Female
Highlander-Male
Reo-Male
Cats-Female

That's a problem, 50% of races are monogendered. You would want to make them whole before adding any other race.
This doesn't mean that they're completely against monogender races as you can see from his comments about Viera in 2013 nor was it something that would later stop them from making Viera and Hrothgar as we see them today..more limited than any 1.0 race/ clan.

All this means is that before we ever get a new race (which we know isn't happening, they said these are the last) they would first do the counter-parts to what we have (something they have never confirmed to be doing. MAYBE they will show us NPCs at some point but even that's iffy as they know how much that would trigger a massive wave of people not realizing why an NPC is easier to make than a PC)

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Originally Posted by reivaxe

People have been pointing out for years YP's line about not doing Male Viera and people kinda convinced themselves that they promised to never do 1 gender races again regardless... like this vvv

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Perhaps he will reconsider his stance like he has done on a few other things. This thread was created in order to show support for the inclusion of male viera, so chill out. Their appearance is a topic of discussion, but at the end of the day, what they look like would be up to the devs. I think we should respect the design choice of the devs if male viera really do get included.

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Originally Posted by reivaxe

All this means is that before we ever get a new race (which we know isn't happening, they said these are the last) they would first do the counter-parts to what we have (something they have never confirmed to be doing. MAYBE they will show us NPCs at some point but even that's iffy as they know how much that would trigger a massive wave of people not realizing why an NPC is easier to make than a PC)

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A new race might not be entirely off the table.

When asked about whether viera and hrothgar would be the last new races to be introduced to the game, and if there were any plans to add more customization options to the established races, Yoshi P responded like this:

"if it is a customization option that significantly changes the shape of the races body, I think we would be better off to tackle the challenge of just introducing a new playable race all together instead."


Source: Link

Also, they probably won't show female hrothgar/male viera NPCs unless they are prepared to make them playable. Viera and hrothgar NPCs were not given head items at the start of ShB because the dev team was aware people would then ask "why can't we wear head items then?" This was a concern Yoshi P expressed in one of the live letters - the same logic can apply to the other genders as well. If we do see a male viera or female hrothgar NPC, then it would be safe to assume they will be playable options later.

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Originally Posted by Senn

Perhaps he will reconsider his stance like he has done on a few other things..

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Maybe.

Fact of the matter is that he simply never promised NOT to do monogenders again as people like to think he did nor is doing it in ShB somehow sacrilege because "they said monogenders are WRONG before!". It was never a promise that could be broken and the context of what the game was back in ARR times vs what it is today can't be ignored as well as his stance on the topic of male Viera back then.

Maybe some day we will get the genders to the races we want ... but it is what it is. We got what we got right now. Maybe they will just make them NPCs to shows us them and have that backfire in their face as people don't know how much more work a PC is compared to an NPC. Who knows.

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Originally Posted by reivaxe

Maybe.

Fact of the matter is that he simply never promised NOT to do monogenders again as people like to think he did nor is doing it in ShB somehow sacrilege because "they said monogenders are WRONG before!". It was never a promise that could be broken and the context of what the game was back in ARR times vs what it is today can't be ignored as well as his stance on the topic of male Viera back then.

Maybe some day we will get the genders to the races we want ... but it is what it is. We got what we got right now. Maybe they will just make them NPCs to shows us them and have that backfire in their face as people don't know how much more work a PC is compared to an NPC. Who knows.

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Yeah, some people are saying he promised that. I would like a source on it if true... But I'm not of the mindset he made any promises, either. I also don't think he or the dev team ever said it was "wrong". However, in my view, Yoshi P did see the missing genders (male miqo'te, female highlander/roegadyn) as problems that needed to be corrected at that time. We'll just have to wait and see how things pan out now. Again, about the NPC thing, there will most likely be no male viera or female hrothgar npcs - not until the dev team is prepared to make them playable. It will definitely backfire otherwise.

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Originally Posted by Amnmaat

Please be civil or consider seeing a psychiatrist.

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The irony is so thick, Tony Stark's making a suit out of it.

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Originally Posted by TheMightyMollusk

The irony is so thick, Tony Stark's making a suit out of it.

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Yes, women say I'm thick all the time; you can simmer down now.

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Originally Posted by Senn

Yeah, some people are saying he promised that. I would like a source on it if true... But I'm not of the mindset he made any promises, either. I also don't think he or the dev team ever said it was "wrong". However, in my view, Yoshi P did see the missing genders (male miqo'te, female highlander/roegadyn) as problems that needed to be corrected at that time. We'll just have to wait and see how things pan out now. Again, about the NPC thing, there will most likely be no male viera or female hrothgar npcs - not until the dev team is prepared to make them playable. It will definitely backfire otherwise.

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In the end they saw a need to give us an official explanation about the missing genders for Viera and hrothgar, so they recognize the importance of it. What they need to next is explain why they're not adding them at fanfest or reveal them at fanfest. To not address it would really be in bad form.

Amnmaat, they'd just repeat what they said here on why (if) they don't reveal/release the missing genders at Fan Fest/next expansion.

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Originally Posted by Amnmaat

In the end they saw a need to give us an official explanation about the missing genders for Viera and hrothgar, so they recognize the importance of it. What they need to next is explain why they're not adding them at fanfest or reveal them at fanfest. To not address it would really be in bad form.

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They already addressed the lack of male viera and female hrothgar. Even if the dev team decided to include male viera and female hrothgar, I don't think they would be ready by 6.0. We'll see.

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Originally Posted by Senn

A new race might not be entirely off the table.

When asked about whether viera and hrothgar would be the last new races to be introduced to the game, and if there were any plans to add more customization options to the established races, Yoshi P responded like this:

"if it is a customization option that significantly changes the shape of the races body, I think we would be better off to tackle the challenge of just introducing a new playable race all together instead."


Source: Link

Also, they probably won't show female hrothgar/male viera NPCs unless they are prepared to make them playable. Viera and hrothgar NPCs were not given head items at the start of ShB because the dev team was aware people would then ask "why can't we wear head items then?" This was a concern Yoshi P expressed in one of the live letters - the same logic can apply to the other genders as well. If we do see a male viera or female hrothgar NPC, then it would be safe to assume they will be playable options later.

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That is a mighty reach.

All he is saying is that it's possible that they make new customization options but if the scope of those options were too large they would be better off as something new all together (cause yeah, redoing all the gear to look like a new body type is what they do for new races and putting in the amount of work to make a Viera body that's tall and thin like an elezen but better proportioned would be better used for a new race than as a 10years late addition to them).
Aka, don't expect ass sliders or anything that would change much about the body or head shape of the race. It's easy to forget how outdated this CC is, it's not a problem for many older and newer Character Creatures to allow you to have wider hips or thighs or slimmer features. In this game though? you can't control any of that. And the "leaving a crack open for more new races" bit ... I think it's the classic "never wanna say no but it's not gonna happen" Japanese talk.

Like yeah, I can't think of them saying anything about it in the past 9 months off the top of my head (though I'm sure they touched on it in the Hrothgar panel but I can't be bothered to keep rewatching it just to talk about the same nothing) so much like with Viera hair and helms I'll give it the benefit of "latest news tops older" till I come across that again. But looking at Viera and Hrothgar as is ... makes it clear they prob don't have the ability to make more stuff than they do now unless something changes.

As for seeing the other genders, Datamines suggest we may.

I'd be slightly more interested in male viera than female hrothgar I suppose.

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Originally Posted by Senn

So you think the cutting back on content and getting additional funding are signs that character customization might get expanded? Well, I'm not sure if that is the case, but if it is, that'd be pretty nice.

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Would be awesome if they‘d expand the character customization and also may add the missing genders! I don‘t know, if we can take the following as a hint about ffxvi and ffxiv for something big incoming:

YoshiP: „Our next big information reveal is scheduled for 2021, so in the meantime, I expect everyone to have fun speculating, as we have a lot in store—not only for Final Fantasy XVI, but for Final Fantasy XIV, too. Needless to say, I’ll be working hard on both!“

Source: https://blog.playstation.com/2020/09...unced-for-ps5/

I DO believe we'll see the missing genders, EVENTUALLY. It's that "eventually" that's very nebulous at best. It could be 6.0 (though with the delays, I'm not holding my breath); it could be 7.0 in a new tradition I just made up of introducing new CC options on odd-numbered expansions (3.0 with Au Ra, 5.0 with f!Viera/m!Hroth, 7.0 with m!Viera/f!Hroth, and since Yoshi-P has already said these are the last races then for 9.0...idk, butt sliders?). Or it could be so far off when the game is entering maintenance-only mode in order to lure players back in.

Now, of course I'd love them by 6.0, but also want to keep my expectations realistic.

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Originally Posted by DBriggs304

We knew well before product release and anytime we think Viera, we think Fran.

We knew.
We all knew.

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This is a cop out. Youre essentially saying "Oh you know that game some people played where it had its own world building and lore, yeah thats going to be a copy/paste here so dont even expect male viera at all."

But since you wanted to pull the lore angle as "Well we all knew", then lets work this out. Lore, in game, stated that male miqote are a lot more rare, yet that was changed for 2.0 for more player options. So that immediately set a soft precedent with handling lore and off sexes. Furthermore every race has had an off sex paired with it. Every single one, since 2.0. So again, there is a soft precedent that if you see a race, it will provide you the off sexes. Then the lore itself doesnt actually make a full load of sense overall for the FFXIV universe. In FF12, the set up for viera made sense cause it was a part of the world building, a small subset of the world that you had some interaction with, and was within a closed 1 player perspective.

For ffxiv, you dont have that luxury. Because the game is designed for a male/female character system dynamic, it necessitated that there had to not only now be lore for why only female viera, but also lore for only male Hrothgar. At a glance this works just fine - Males stick to the forests kind of deal, and Hrothgar females are rare so you dont see them to much. However, this only makes sense initially cause then when you get to norvrandt, the whole consistency falls apart.

For people who havent gotten here yet, while the races may appear a bit similar between the two worlds they are not culturally the same. Miqote seem to be more inclined for business and trade, and are less tribal on Norvrandt. The elezen dont give two craps about the woods, Lalafells are dwarves and are a territorial industrious race that keeps to themselves and arent heavily involved in trade. Etc etc. The races have different cultural standards. Even Hrothgar seems to imply that females being the norm isnt unusual on Norvrandt with the quest line in Ahm Arang. However, for whatever reason Viera seem to keep the same exact lore standards as is implied on the source. They keep to the forest, males dont venture out and are rare cause theyre busy behaving as forest protectors or what ever.

This gets worse because of the actual world considerations on Norvrandt. Fanow is more or less the last Viera settlement, slowly being pushed to the brink from sin eaters. Furthermore, Viera females seem to have no problem leaving the woods and living their own lives or entertaining the idea of finding help outside of the forest. The males are still no where to be seen, not anywhere near the last settlement of viera, they dont engage you what-so-ever when you travel deeper into Rak tikka with Yshtola (yet the females from Fanow do). What in hells name are they doing? And then there's the issue of not a single Male viera might have the gumption that their world is on the precipice of literal annihilation to possibly forgo cultural norms like some of their female counter parts and look for aid or life elsewhere? Females have agency but the males are gonna stick to that cultural norm no matter what, even in the face of the apocalypse? You might be able to argue this on the source to some extent, but Norvrandt's situation is a lot more dire. So for some reason Viera specifically has the same cultural norms between both worlds, and when the world is on the brink of annihilation, the males seem to still stick to their cultural norms, despite females doing what ever they want. They dont even act as proper forest protectors as we traverse pretty deeply into the woods and the first encounters with Viera is with the females, not males.

This is the issue with the lore from FFXII. It doesnt fit within FFXIVs universe. At a glance, it can loosely work, but in an MMO environment + the world building involved with FFXIV as well as soft precedent, the Viera Lore doesnt fit. It does plenty fine in a single player game where its nicely incorporated into it, but not here in the MMO environment with the pre-existing lore. The lore is pretty damn flimsy, because you can literally overturn the entirety of the viera lore with simple idea that "Desperate times call for desperate measures." Every player would go "Oh yeah, that makes sense why we start seeing male viera all of a sudden. Things are bad."

Pretty much if you can undo the lore with one line, either your lore isnt very well put together or the lore doesnt fit with the world.

Now we all know the meta reason why we dont see male viera - the devs couldnt develop both. Limited time and resources with certain goals, they couldnt develop 4 model types (Male/Fem Viera, Male/Fem Hrothgar), and because one of their goals was to have a more beast like race, this is the compromise they ran with. Mind you no one really knew what was going. They figured itd work out, but frankly I think people were expecting male viera and were somewhat disappointed when hrothgar was introduced. And for, as I said, reasonable reasons.

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Originally Posted by WhiteArchmage

I DO believe we'll see the missing genders, EVENTUALLY. It's that "eventually" that's very nebulous at best. It could be 6.0 (though with the delays, I'm not holding my breath); it could be 7.0 in a new tradition I just made up of introducing new CC options on odd-numbered expansions (3.0 with Au Ra, 5.0 with f!Viera/m!Hroth, 7.0 with m!Viera/f!Hroth, and since Yoshi-P has already said these are the last races then for 9.0...idk, butt sliders?). Or it could be so far off when the game is entering maintenance-only mode in order to lure players back in.

Now, of course I'd love them by 6.0, but also want to keep my expectations realistic.

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I don't know if realistic is the word you're looking for. When you go into 7.0 that's an additional expansion's worth of equipment and glamour to make for them. The further off the more work they put on themselves. The way I see, based on the additional workload, 6.0 is male Viera's and female hrothgar's last chance.

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Originally Posted by Melichoir

This is a cop out. Youre essentially saying "Oh you know that game some people played where it had its own world building and lore, yeah thats going to be a copy/paste here so dont even expect male viera at all."

But since you wanted to pull the lore angle as "Well we all knew", then lets work this out. Lore, in game, stated that male miqote are a lot more rare, yet that was changed for 2.0 for more player options. So that immediately set a soft precedent with handling lore and off sexes. Furthermore every race has had an off sex paired with it. Every single one, since 2.0. So again, there is a soft precedent that if you see a race, it will provide you the off sexes. Then the lore itself doesnt actually make a full load of sense overall for the FFXIV universe. In FF12, the set up for viera made sense cause it was a part of the world building, a small subset of the world that you had some interaction with, and was within a closed 1 player perspective.

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Has nothing to do with lore as a singular reason. All of that is your own personal interpretation.

We know who the Viera are and how they are mainly represented...and we knew this well before launch.

We aren't victims of disinformation.

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Originally Posted by DBriggs304

Has nothing to do with lore as a singular reason. All of that is your own personal interpretation.

We know who the Viera are and how they are mainly represented...and we knew this well before launch.

We aren't victims of disinformation.

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Personal interpretation of what? How the FFXII lore was dropped into FFXIV almost verbatim, but that lore doesnt quite fit within the context of FFXIVs world building?

The reasons we dont have Male Viera were loosely explained after the reveals, not before. So up until Hrothgar reveal, there was a decent reason to believe that we might be getting male Viera based on past precedent as well as issues with the lore. You can try and spin this how you see fit, but there was no knowing for sure before the hrothgar reveal. The best you got is you stuck with lore reasons from another title as justification and it panned out.

When we look at the full context of the situation, it seems like the lore reasons provided were more an after thought rather than an actual design decision. Meaning, They wanted a beast like race, but also understood that people have been asking for Viera since forever, and met half way on this to fulfill both with the expectation that it would work out and people wouldnt think about it to much in the context of FFXIV. This particular half way was decided upon because they expressed teh issue with creating new races and how the system works regarding that. There are pragmatic limitations to how the CC works and how FFXIV handles dealing with character models and the like.

Of course this didnt pan out. People want male viera, and female hrothgar for that matter, and the lore reasons dont hold up. If you dont think so, just go rewatch the Hrothgar reveal. The audience can be heard clearly groaning in disappointment. It was the immediate buzz following the reveal. A lot of people werent all that happy.

There was no 'disinformation'. There were expectations and failures on both the parts of the devs and the audience.

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Originally Posted by Melichoir

Personal interpretation of what? How the FFXII lore was dropped into FFXIV almost verbatim, but that lore doesnt quite fit within the context of FFXIVs world building?

The reasons we dont have Male Viera were loosely explained after the reveals, not before. So up until Hrothgar reveal, there was a decent reason to believe that we might be getting male Viera based on past precedent as well as issues with the lore. You can try and spin this how you see fit, but there was no knowing for sure before the hrothgar reveal. The best you got is you stuck with lore reasons from another title as justification and it panned out.

When we look at the full context of the situation, it seems like the lore reasons provided were more an after thought rather than an actual design decision. Meaning, They wanted a beast like race, but also understood that people have been asking for Viera since forever, and met half way on this to fulfill both with the expectation that it would work out and people wouldnt think about it to much in the context of FFXIV. This particular half way was decided upon because they expressed teh issue with creating new races and how the system works regarding that. There are pragmatic limitations to how the CC works and how FFXIV handles dealing with character models and the like.

Of course this didnt pan out. People want male viera, and female hrothgar for that matter, and the lore reasons dont hold up. If you dont think so, just go rewatch the Hrothgar reveal. The audience can be heard clearly groaning in disappointment. It was the immediate buzz following the reveal. A lot of people werent all that happy.

There was no 'disinformation'. There were expectations and failures on both the parts of the devs and the audience.

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Youre arguing the parameters of their lore...against their lore.

We dont have male Viera cause we dont have them. Period. It could be lore related, then again, maybe not.

The expectations is on the players. This isn't a dual fault situation.

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Originally Posted by Amnmaat

I don't know if realistic is the word you're looking for. When you go into 7.0 that's an additional expansion's worth of equipment and glamour to make for them. The further off the more work they put on themselves. The way I see, based on the additional workload, 6.0 is male Viera's and female hrothgar's last chance.

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I HAVE previously said that the longer they take, the harder the work will be to fit all the gear models, so my asumption for 7.0 is that the dev team finds a way to ease that workload or gets additional design/QA support. Given that SE is working on a new IP, plus FFXVI (plus other games that we may not even know about yet), I'm HOPING that a larger budget and team for XIV can be done.

IF there is no way to speed up QA and gear retrofitting (which I'll be honest, idk if there IS), it's 6.0 or the last big expansion. Which we don't know which it would be.

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Originally Posted by DBriggs304

Youre arguing the parameters of their lore...against their lore.

We dont have male Viera cause we dont have them. Period. It could be lore related, then again, maybe not.

The expectations is on the players. This isn't a dual fault situation.

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My points are

1) The lore is almost a copy/paste from a previous title in the franchise, and wasnt even tailored to fit within FFXIV effectively.
2) That the lore doesnt fit well within the pre-existing lore and world building we were given
3) Soft precedents were set with ARR in how races would be treated with them having off sexes
4) The devs were up against a wall, design wise. On the one hand, they wanted a more beast like race for marketing reasons, on the other hand people have been requesting viera since HW. To meet both goals the best they figured, they split the two races as a compromise.
5) They have stated that more or less with the current system there would be no more new races due to how much time it takes to get all the armors/glamours/etc fitted on new race models. This factored into their decision they made regarding splitting the races like they did. Unless they correct how their system works, this still pretty much stands.
6) They knew that there was also a demand for Male Viera, thanks to concept art they put out a long ass time ago in HW, yet did not clearly just say there would not be male viera in FFXIV at all except one time 7 years ago. Hell even then it wasnt that cut and dry.
7) They did not clarify the misconception regarding genderlocked races, instead played a bit of footsie with the idea rather than be clear about it.


You take all this into consideration, and what you get is the following:

The devs wanted to create a beast race, but understood there was still a huge demand for Viera. Due to how their system regarding character models works, it is a time consuming process to introduce races and felt that this would likely be the last opportunity to add a new race. They decided on a compromise regarding this - Female Viera, Male hrothgar. Theyd use pre-existing lore as a filler for Viera, and come up with somethign for Hrothgar. This would appease the widest crowd possible, or atleast this is what they assumed would happen.

Meanwhile, before all this was revealed, the player base had a few facts and perceptions on hand. One was the perception there would never be genderlocked races, there was official design work of male viera from years back, hrothgar were almost non existent as a concept, what leaks came out before the reveal did demonstrate a strong potential for male viera being a selectable race/sex combo (remember the screencap from the I think french version where coding showed the potential responses to you based on your race/gender; One of them was for male viera) and male Viera would be a pretty big landmark in the ff franchise.

When female viera was shown, it amped up the hype and it seemed all but certain to even casual players that male viera would be shown as part of the next reveal. This made sense cause of the aforementioned facts and perceptions, and that since Male Viera would be a new FF concept, making it its own reveal made sense. It would be a big deal. The devs did nothing to slow down this hype or consider this angle for that matter.

When Hrothgar got revealed, disappointment was palpable and the devs did get some pushback. They first stated lore reasons but later clarified that it was design reasons for how things rolled out.

Where it becomes the player bases fault is some of hte expectations were a bit misfounded. Where it's the devs fault is how they rolled things out and the idea they couldve clarified things to help. As a point, if they revealed Hrothgar then viera, they probably wouldve actually avoided a lot of the build up hype and mightve faired a bit better reception wise. If they came out and clarified about gender locked races and not play footsies with the idea, that wouldve helped lower expectations. And if they worked the lore over a bit so it worked contextually in FFXIV, youd have less people having issues with it.

Mind you, since youre so keen on using "It's their lore" perspective, you are right. It is their lore, so with as flimsily implemented as it is, it would be easy for them to change the lore to make better sense in regards to FFXIV.

It is, at best, a dual fault situation. Thinking it's nothing but the player base is absolving areas where the devs predictions were either wrong or their handling of things was a bit off. Was there probably to much hype? Probably. Could the devs helped clamp that down? Yes.

But did we know before hand like your suggesting? No. That only works if you throw out FFXIV lore, precedent, and world building in this one case for FFXII's lore and world building.

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Originally Posted by WhiteArchmage

I HAVE previously said that the longer they take, the harder the work will be to fit all the gear models, so my asumption for 7.0 is that the dev team finds a way to ease that workload or gets additional design/QA support. Given that SE is working on a new IP, plus FFXVI (plus other games that we may not even know about yet), I'm HOPING that a larger budget and team for XIV can be done.

IF there is no way to speed up QA and gear retrofitting (which I'll be honest, idk if there IS), it's 6.0 or the last big expansion. Which we don't know which it would be.

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I agree the issue is a huge work load issue, but that issue exists from the system theyre using. FFXIV to the best of my knowledge is the only MMO with this issue, and that comes from how the CC works. If they want to streamline the process, they need to fix CC. Which I think is what theyre aiming to do with the extra time and resources theyve got lately. I could be completely wrong, but I think this is an optimistic yet pragmatic prediction on whats going on. Especially since FXVI will be a single player game and FFXIV needs to last at least long enough till SE has another MMO lined up or some other source of consistent revenue.