Gender locked race?

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Originally Posted by Lauront

But what if they gender-locked them?

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Pitchforks, torches, etc.

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Originally Posted by BiddyBatnana

What if the Hrothgar are the dwarves D: !

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Wasn't it announced that there will be a dwarf beast race for 5.0 ?

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Originally Posted by Kupocoubo

Wasn't it announced that there will be a dwarf beast race for 5.0 ?

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Yes, and they're genderlocked

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Originally Posted by Gwenorai

Yes, and they're genderlocked

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Nah they just look like men ;):
https://youtu.be/d-PmAQ9Opu4?t=4

Although on a serious point, we know they're genderlocked?

Only reference to dwarves I recall was the website XD.

https://i.imgur.com/AN37AE4.png

They were announced at the NA Fanfest but little beyond that was said.

Nevermind !
Hrothgar apparently have majestic mane ! ~♥
(read on FFXIV discord from datamined quest text)

These Hrothgar or whatever could be cool, but I hope that whatever comes, it comes as both female and male (for reasons that have been gone over many times in this thread, doing multiple new races in halves would only serve to upset twice as many people as a single whole race). However, I was discussing the 'bara cat' / Ronso rumor with my FC and to me at least, I felt we already had a race of brawny Nordic-inspired people with vaguely leonine features, so I was a bit puzzled over Hrothgar's potential aesthetic niche. Unless they go really all-in on the beast-race idea like with Lupin or Ronso, as opposed to the Miqote/Viera being very humanoid.

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Originally Posted by Gwenorai

Yes, and they're genderlocked

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It's true you don't see many dwarf women. And in fact, they are so alike in voice and appearance, that they are often mistaken for dwarf men ,And this in turn has given rise to the belief that there are no dwarf women, and that dwarves just spring out of holes in the ground!

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Originally Posted by Duskane

It's true you don't see many dwarf women. And in fact, they are so alike in voice and appearance, that they are often mistaken for dwarf men ,And this in turn has given rise to the belief that there are no dwarf women, and that dwarves just spring out of holes in the ground!

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https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/...20121012004238

wouldn't mind females being variations of Luca from ff4TAY

EDIT: though knowing SE and beast tribes its going to be hard to tell males and females apart be nice if they showed a more distinct difference between them rather than having to find out through naming convensions ala Frixio being male(Slyph elder that you rescue from Thousand maws) or blatant this is female can you tell its pink ala Kobolds >_>

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Originally Posted by BiddyBatnana

Nevermind !
Hrothgar apparently have majestic mane ! ~♥
(read on FFXIV discord from datamined quest text)

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Lions aren't the only creatures with manes though, and depending on what team Blufever was on, he might've just been guessing at the leonine aspect. Horses, hyenas, some jellyfish, etc all have manes - I'd even describe the male viera from the HW concept art as having manes. Their namesake is the only thing we have to go on.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

Lions aren't the only creatures with manes though, and depending on what team Blufever was on, he might've just been guessing at the leonine aspect. Horses, hyenas, some jellyfish, etc all have manes - I'd even describe the male viera from the HW concept art as having manes. Their namesake is the only thing we have to go on.

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I'm wondering if Hrothgar will keep their manes when they change hairstyles or not be a nice attention to detail if manes changed based on hairstyle but i doubt will happen as that is a lot more work and i don't know if SE would be willing to do that

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Originally Posted by Crushnight

I'm wondering if Hrothgar will keep their manes when they change hairstyles or not be a nice attention to detail if manes changed based on hairstyle but i doubt will happen as that is a lot more work and i don't know if SE would be willing to do that

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They will be most likely tied to faces. Nice faces will have ugly manes, nice manes will be on ugly faces. Reminds me on Au Ra horns.

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Originally Posted by xbahax92

They will be most likely tied to faces. Nice faces will have ugly manes, nice manes will be on ugly faces. Reminds me on Au Ra horns.

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nooooooo! not an au ra repeat :( would probably make some hairstyles really weird

So we have two skeletons + comprehensive armor reworks budgeted for the expansion, and you'd rather have two of the same race instead of two unique races? M+F of two different races was never an option.

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Originally Posted by ShinShimon

So we have two skeletons + comprehensive armor reworks budgeted for the expansion, and you'd rather have two of the same race instead of two unique races? M+F of two different races was never an option.

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Yes? Because, you know. Viera was announced and wanted? This Hrothgar is a new race entirely, unique to FF14 that they made just so they didn't have to have to make a male Viera? That's if the genderlocks are true.

Imagine making another race specifically for males because you didn't want to add males of an already established race which lore is already in the game - in a story which is going to have us in that one place those males are going to inhabit. Don't want to have none of those pesky male Viera NPCs, am I right? Yeah, sounds silly, doesn't it?

Keep in mind that the reasons we know Yoshida wouldn't add male Viera is specifically down to him not liking the 'cuteness' and how 'weird' it would be to have rabbit men. This isn't a lore issue, this is one person's vision being the driving force.

I'd personally lose respect for him if he slaps on genderlocks, he'd earn it by not doing that. He'd earn more if the dev team managed to make two races, that would blow me away.

Erf the hotpatch removed all the Hrothgar and Viera references for quests..

Consider this:

The Viera are, in spirit, the propriety of Ivalice and under the guiding hand of Matsuno.
Yoshi and Matsuno are friends, and Yoshi brought Matsuno on board to guide the Return to Ivalice arc, and ensure it remains faithful to Ivalician lore.
So it makes sense that Yoshi would respect Matsuno’s creations as his to have the final say on.
Ivalician lore states that male Viera are so rare, that no non-Viera has ever seen them. To go against this would not merely be breaking FFXIV lore but Ivalice lore too, and in all likelihood, they may think that if male Viera were to ever be revealed it should be in an Ivalice title, not in what essentially amount to a fanservice a cameo in an MMO. It would basically be FFXIV stealing Ivalice’s thunder.

So, how about they get around this, by introducing a FFXIV unique race, who in FFXIV lore are related to the Viera, but this does not step on the toes of Mastuno’s Ivalice.
This new FFXIV exclusive race, related to Viera, are predominantly male, or are entirely non-dimorphic/asexual, but look masculine.
This new race are called the Hrothgar, they’re large, hare-like people, with manes.

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Originally Posted by BiddyBatnana

Erf the hotpatch removed all the Hrothgar and Viera references for quests..

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Or did it just fix the glitch that revealed it?

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

Consider this:

Yoshi and Matsuno are friends, and Yoshi brought Matsuno on board to guide the Return to Ivalice arc, and ensure it remains faithful to Ivalician lore.
So it makes sense that Yoshi would respect Matsuno’s creations as his to have the final say on.
Ivalician lore states that male Viera are so rare, that no non-Viera has ever seen them. To go against this would not merely be breaking FFXIV lore but Ivalice lore too, and in all likelihood, they may think that if male Viera were to ever be revealed it should be in an Ivalice title, not in what essentially amount to a fanservice a cameo in an MMO. It would basically be FFXIV stealing Ivalice’s thunder.

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FFXIV lore =/= Ivalice Alliance lore, Rabanastre (FFXII) was not built over Lesalia (FFTactics). In FFXIV, the Ivalice of FFXII come AFTER the one from FFTacticsn while in the real Ivalice, FFTactics is set in the FUTURE of FFXII.
Not everything is respected in FFXIV, why would male vieras be an exception ?

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To go against this would not merely be breaking FFXIV lore but Ivalice lore too

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So what ? The Ivalice raid itself break the lore of Ivalice.

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they may think that if male Viera were to ever be revealed it should be in an Ivalice title

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Oh yeah ? It's not like the last FF game set in Ivalice is Tactics Advance 2, released 12 years ago. We will not wait Square Enix to make a new Ivalice game to get a complete race in FFXIV.

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Originally Posted by Kupocoubo

FFXIV lore =/= Ivalice Alliance lore, Rabanastre (FFXII) was not built over Lesalia (FFTactics). In FFXIV, the Ivalice of FFXII come AFTER the one from FFTacticsn while in the real Ivalice, FFTactics is set in the FUTURE of FFXII.
Not everything is respected in FFXIV, why would male vieras be an exception ?

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It would basically be FFXIV stealing Ivalice’s thunder.

Male Viera would be a big thing, and they're a creation of Ivalice, not FFXIV.

I said it once, I'll say it again:

Male viera or riot. A lion/Ronso/whatever the heck a Hrothgar is going to be is no substitute for male viera.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

It would basically be FFXIV stealing Ivalice’s thunder.

Male Viera would be a big thing, and they're a creation of Ivalice, not FFXIV.

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Yes it will be a big thing, and Square will get mad money thanks to that.

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Originally Posted by Kaoru_Nagisa

A lion/Ronso/whatever the heck a Hrothgar is going to be is no substitute for male viera.

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...and yet, for many of us, it would be. Which means the ideal solution would be to have both races added with no gender lock.

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Originally Posted by Kaoru_Nagisa

I said it once, I'll say it again:

Male viera or riot. A lion/Ronso/whatever the heck a Hrothgar is going to be is no substitute for male viera.

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What if they look way better than the Viera ?

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Originally Posted by Kupocoubo

FFXIV lore =/= Ivalice Alliance lore, Rabanastre (FFXII) was not built over Lesalia (FFTactics). In FFXIV, the Ivalice of FFXII come AFTER the one from FFTacticsn while in the real Ivalice, FFTactics is set in the FUTURE of FFXII.
Not everything is respected in FFXIV, why would male vieras be an exception ?

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Agree here. The next Final Fantasy title could be another Ivalice game and could still reveal Male Viera's. Its all up to the Ivalice creator wether he wants them to exist/shown or not. I guess.

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Originally Posted by BiddyBatnana

What if they look way better than the Viera ?

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Doesnt change the fact that genderlocking races is shit.

Just want to quietly mention that in the French leak, le/la were used for both Viera and for Hrothgar. Could be coding with genderlock (I'm skeptical), could be saying we get both. Time will tell.

Another thing I want to mention though... on Hrothgar while I'll wait and see what comes out and am prepared to eat my words on leonine/beastial race playability if it comes to that, I do want to give a mention to what's likely influencing that race.

I was really confused by the name when it came up because it sounded familiar, so I googled up and lo and behold King Hrothgar from the epic poem Beowulf. Final Fantasy tends to play fast and loose with mythological references, but in the source Hrothgar was the Danish king who built a hall that got attacked by a beast called Grendel. Grendel did have a mother too and she was fought following his defeat.

Like I've said I'm not into the idea of particularly leonine faces so my position has some bias. But I think manes are going to be a thing, and I strongly suspect that with Hrothgar the point is going to be less about looking animal and more about looking monstrous in the vein of Grendel and his mother.

That said Bahamut in mythology's normally a whale, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Originally Posted by Kupocoubo

Yes it will be a big thing, and Square will get mad money thanks to that.

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Depends on their design. If they're ugly af no one will bother fantasia only the fanatics.
Look at the SWTOR's drama over the male Togruta design.

What we wanted :
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iuN1hRJFv3...AC+Trainer.jpg

What we ended up with :
http://dulfy.net/wp-content/uploads/...ern-male-4.jpg

So I won't bother fantasia if they pull up the same disaster with the Viera.
I'd rather have an other good looking race if they can't model the male Viera properly.

I really don't want us going back to genderlocked races. I don't understand why they'd even want to do this when they know so many people want male Viera already. Nothing against another race on top of Viera, but why leave one half finished? I just don't get it.

More people are going to be upset rather than satisfied with whatever the other race is just by virtue of us getting them in place of male Viera. It's going to sour the whole thing for a lot of people. You'd think SE would know better by now. :/

Yeah, I'm pretty dead set against gender locking races (or jobs, for that matter.)

I REALLY wonder player base-wise how many people would be upset with a different race for males vs females. Like of course the solution is have both genders for both, but if they only had a certain amount of resources, how much of the player base is going to start setting fires everywhere.

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Originally Posted by BiddyBatnana

Depends on their design. If they're ugly af no one will bother fantasia only the fanatics.

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That's precisely why I thought male ronso only instead of male vieras would be a bad idea

Would the gender lock still be considered such a bad thing if male Hrothgar had been revealed and we were waiting on the female reveal? I think many would not mind a male only race if it meant the possibility of getting female Vieras.

Broadly speaking this is what is likely from just all the facets we can factor in:

There will most likely be Male Viera in the game to compliment the female viera
There is no reason not to have male viera because FFXIV Lore is not a copy paste of previous lores. Furthermore, there would probably be more public backlash from having Viera gender locked than from having male Viera be a mainstay in the game. Having male viera, btw, would be a step outside previous FF games and set 14 apart from the others. Other races that were once gender locked were made counterparts, so going back to that system would be out of place. Broadly across most MMOs, the concept of gender locked races is not popular and would ding FFXIV more than help it.

There might be a second race introduced
This one is a bit sketchier but possible. The Hrothgar may be a second race that was unannounced for the xpac. There have been, in the past, speculation of a Ronso like race acting as the male 'counterpart' to viera, but as pointed out above (and by many people) its unlikely that Viera will be absolutely gender locked. The information regarding this race is pretty disparate, and the most we have to go on is a post by leaker and some in game leaked coding that refers to them. But beyond that, there isnt much else besides speculation to the exacts of Hrothgar or if we will get 2 races at all.


Its worth noting that Shadowbringers is shaping up to bring a TON of content as it is. Releasing TWO races ontop of 2 jobs, a Collaborative 24man, 2 new and different zones, among all the usual is quite a lot to expect. Part of me believes that there will only be one new race at launch, and if there is a second, it wont be opened up till later in the xpac. Theres more credibility to the idea of Male Viera because of all the pros of doing them (Consider the fact that this thread exists drums up a lot of hype and discussion about ShB from teh mere chatter of whether were getting male viera or not. That drives interest from a marketing side) along with artwork and the like weve seen in the past. The Hrothgar is something that was revealed, by accident it appears, in the last week or so. All things considered, theyre being hyper tight lipped about a second race, which is weird from a marketing perspective. Imagine they hinted at a second race at the first fanfest. The traffic that would generate fro teh game would be nuts. Keeping it incredibly under guard and key doesnt actually buy your game anything. And I think consideration of business practices is appropriate cause SE is a company at the end of the day. PR and Marketing is going to matter and affect what info is released to us at things like FanFest.

I could be totally wrong and we could get two gender locked races and one of them is essentially a Ronso like race, but I dont believe that to be the case based on what we got so far.

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Originally Posted by Reinha

Would the gender lock still be considered such a bad thing if male Hrothgar had been revealed and we were waiting on the female reveal? I think many would not mind a male only race if it meant the possibility of getting female Vieras.

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I tend to agree, but because of this particular reason - people want Viera. And even your scenario likely would've gotten us to the same situation where if people didn't ask for Hrothgar females, they still would've asked for male Viera.

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Originally Posted by Reinha

Would the gender lock still be considered such a bad thing if male Hrothgar had been revealed and we were waiting on the female reveal? I think many would not mind a male only race if it meant the possibility of getting female Vieras.

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Actually it still would generate issues. People want Viera more than anything yes, but its also pretty clear they want male and female vieras. Theres a huge demand for it. In this scenario, ti would hurt the game more not less. The first point most would make would be "Why would you make a completely separate gender locked race to Viera, and not just give us both Male and Female Viera. You know, what people want?" Itd be seen as wasting resources on something less in demand. Again, gender locked races in MMOs are not all that popular (save specific exceptions - like playing a named hero/character). People are gonna look at this and say "Yeah, good to know people get female Vieras, but what about the boys. This sucks."

It's not a really well thought out move.

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Originally Posted by Reinha

Would the gender lock still be considered such a bad thing if male Hrothgar had been revealed and we were waiting on the female reveal? I think many would not mind a male only race if it meant the possibility of getting female Vieras.

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I'd still be against it then i do not like gender locking on races or jobs if we got male race 1st i'd push for females of that race with as much volume as i would the other way round it is something that doesn't sit right with me at all

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Originally Posted by Reinha

I think many would not mind a male only race if it meant the possibility of getting female Vieras.

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But no one asked for this, while Vieras were in high demand

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Originally Posted by Kupocoubo

But no one asked for this, while Vieras were in high demand

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No one asked for Au Ra yet we got them instead of Viera. Didn't see the game crash and burn or get negatively impacted at all. And Au Ra are a popular race. Stormblood didn't add any race, still continued its success doing even better than Heavensward.

People are still getting the version of Viera that was overwhelmingly asked for, considering no male viera has ever been shown before. Anyone asking for male viera was doing so based on an imaginary idea/concept of them.

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Originally Posted by Shippuu

Anyone asking for male viera was doing so based on an imaginary idea/concept of them.

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You mean like the concept art that came from the devs themselves or what not?
I mean, most of us want male Viera to exist as a playable option, first and foremost, regardless of what we'll actually get. But it's not like we had absolutely nothing to base our expectations on within the context of XIV

Massivelyop has an article speculating about what's going on here, with pros and cons of the various theories...