Viera are a tall race, get over it.
Because you asked me very nicely; of course.
The viera are my absolute favourite in all of Final Fantasy series. Most commonly their design is known from FF12, and considering the ones in XIV are based on the Dalmascan era, they are known as stern-faced, tall and quite an intimidating-looking race.
The female Vieras are not cutesy. They are not meant to be small. While I understand XIV is different to XII - it still doesn’t mean we can say “screw it, remove race lock for everything” and give people free will to do whatever they want with their race so the only difference we have from eachother is the rabbit/cat ears. The reality of it? I hate change when it involves details like this.
People who desire these adjustments I assume this is their first final fantasy game and they most likely see it as some type of ‘dress up game’ like Gaia Online and have no respect for race individuality, so of course they don’t care about a race that has been in the final fantasy series for many years.
I want more race lock options, I want all the races to be even more individual from eachother.
I mean if we s re going based off lore should we even have a male counterpart as a playable version? I get where you are coming from but just like people mentioned with the male counter parts lore is a lackluster reason because for FFXIV they are the one that establish the lore.
Though having the min height adjusted would also not invalidate their max height or what you wish for your character to look like. Though I get the idea of more locks, personally I fall into the less locks route but that is me.
Believe me, I was amongst the group of people who were absolutely infuriated at the idea of male Viera being introduced into XIV. In the end, I figured it was pointless essentially protesting the idea, when the developers had already made the character and already announced it's coming in Endwalker - I have accepted that at this stage because public demand won.
And your last message, I see that but my issue is; I would be the very few people who would stay true to the lore and make the viera medium/max height.. Everyone else would make it the minimum for the sake of being cute. The race is known for being tall and towering over humans - that is what I loved about it and makes them stand out even more. People can argue that a mere 4 inches "wouldnt make a difference" but honestly, it would especially next to a normal sized Viera.
When I came across Viera in XII I was astounded at the site of them, their height, their white hair, tanned skin, long nails etc - you could not mistake a Viera for anything other than their race due to the defining characteristics... Meanwhile, if the minimum height was hypothetically 5'6 I'm just going to assume they're not real viera and they're just no different from the human staff in the gold saucer who are wearing rabbit ears .
I can deal with the developers skipping out on digitigrade feet, longer arms and more bulky posture, basically humanised them even further - they only made these changes because it would've really reduced what we could wear. What I will not stand for is people further adjusting them by wishing they could be smaller in height therefore just completely ruining one of the very few racial difference we have.
I fell in love with Viera as they were introduced in SHB, and due to being a lore fan, and this being my first FF game, I read up on their history and stuff since it intrigued me. But, I have to disagree with your standpoint on the male Viera. Male Viera always existed, but they were just never seen to the eyes of the public. I am a bit disappointed how they turned out to look like though considering they're supposed to be fierce protectors of the forest and they came out looking more on the softer side, but I am going to swap to one come EW at max height since Viera are supposed to be tall (my current Viera is max height as well).
I do agree with you though that I prefer if Viera never are reduced to 5'6 with minimum height. Their current minimum height is perfect for them, 5'10 being the smallest Viera. Their height makes the difference between a female Hyur with bunny ears and Viera.
The problem with allowing a larger height difference is that character models are created with a particular height in mind. Scale them up or down too much and they'll start looking strange next to characters of the same model but set at the other end of the scale, or next to a different character model intended to be shorter.
I feel like that's an issue across a lot of games - when you actually stop and look at creatures standing next to your character, you realise that they're a lot bigger than you assumed they were.
I wonder if it's a perspective trick and your brain processes your concept of their size relative to the real you - perceiving them as a small object a few metres away on the other side of the "window" (TV screen) rather than comparing them to your character.
And yes, some of the NPC enemies get scaled up for visibility but if you stop and look at them, they're huge.
While a few cm/inches don't make or break anything imo, I'd have to agree on the side where each race should keep their own flavor of identity because they're all different species, not 'variations' of the same one like we humans are - if anything, I'm assuming it'd be more favorable for many to have a game where there's only "one race" available, but has a bazillion customization options, than to try to homogenize 8 races that are meant to look different, even if 7 of them fall under "a human, but with-" tropes
But isn't the height scaling in XIV an actual 1:1 proportion ratio with everything?
So, scaling wouldn't really change how gear is displayed regardless. The only issue I could see would be extreme up scaling causing the texture pixels to be even more visible, but doubtful that would be an issue for a 10% increase.