Viera Race "Confirmed" for 5.0! Are you gonna change races?

[RoroCookies]

If you go back in this thread, someone found an older interview right before ARR came out in here where Yoshi-P says he thinks male rabbits would be weird, and that if they did viera as new playable race, they would consider to make a different race for the males. The timing of the interview would put it after they had decided to do female roes and male miqote. Maybe the rest of the team thinks genderlocking is dumb, but Yoshi-P doesn't seem to think so.

Then years later when Yoshi-P still expressed his dislike of the male viera when was talking about the races considered for Heavensward (he said they are too cute.)

What Yoshi-P thinks has shown to be very important. He was the one saying all those years ago blue mage would be impossible as a normal job, and that he would do it as a solo job. He's the one who started to talk in interviews after Heavensward about how he was thinking SAM as tank didn't make sense and that it should DPS. Previously they had said it almost was the tank job for Heavensward, meaning the team wanted or at least didn't mind SAM as tank.

This is probably my biggest fear. Yoshi-P seems to be okay with genderlocking Viera because the men weren't 'beast-like' enough for his taste. A part of me wants to think maybe he got that itch with male aura instead and perhaps changed his mind on male Viera.
Whatever it is, I do hope the dev team fought for no genderlocking. However, if we had two genderlocked races I feel like there would've been more hints to something to come beside Viera. Like, the big reveal wouldn't just be Fran but alongside her with someone else too. Having a second race show up would be so out in the long field and somewhat misleading.

[Tanama]

Have we gotten any lore hints on a lion race?

[Rokke]

Has a male dominant lion-like race been hinted at at all in the lore?

No hints of a specific race, no. Suncats/Nuhns have been our only "lions".

[stormygabe]

This is probably my biggest fear. Yoshi-P seems to be okay with genderlocking Viera because the men weren't 'beast-like' enough for his taste. A part of me wants to think maybe he got that itch with male aura instead and perhaps changed his mind on male Viera.
Whatever it is, I do hope the dev team fought for no genderlocking. However, if we had two genderlocked races I feel like there would've been more hints to something to come beside Viera. Like, the big reveal wouldn't just be Fran but alongside her with someone else too. Having a second race show up would be so out in the long field and somewhat misleading.

Yeah this has me kinda nervous lol. I'm trying to be patient since the next fanfest is this weekend, but GDI. Knowing how some guys (including apparently Yoshida) are when it comes to something like this makes me feel like we're setting ourselves up for disappointment by hoping for a neat looking male version of this race. I'm just trying to put the worst case scenario (for me) in my mind so that I won't be too disappointed if it turns out they do something like genderlocking or making them all "lion-like."

*sigh* At least I got Cat Daddy.

[KaijinRhada]

I'm just trying to look on the bright-side of making them look leonine or having a leonine race as a means of having extra-fabulous hair.

[Final-Fantasy]

They already showed male Viera once before in the form of concept art, so you can bet they are going to use what was shown previously and include both female and male, they wont add only female.

[SomeRandomHuman]

Making a gender-exclusive race now undermines previous gender-locked races. They have artwork of males and if the patch cycle is any indication, SE will keep to the cycle of keeping things like Miqo'te and Roegadyn. There'll be both genders.

[Daralii]

Something about Fran's model puts me off of Viera... I can't put my finger on what it is, but it doesn't feel like the same Fran.

Now granted, I'm aware they're two entirely different models and textures, bla bla bla, technical stuff. The recreation is -very good-, I'm not disputing that. But to me... Something seems off. I more than likely won't be rolling one, which is a shame because I thought their lore in FFXII was pretty interesting.

Most of Fran's model is ripped from FFXII, and uses a messy hybrid of the female midlander and miqo'te skeletons. She's as much a placeholder as Yugiri was in ARR.

[Iscah]

It doesnt make sense to me to exclude male Viera if you consider all male nd female kid-Viera are hard to differate (as the lore states).
This would mean that all male Viera reaching the age of 13 would disappear magically into thin air.
While you could argue they disappear because male Viera fetch them from the villages every few years, this still implies that a male Viera has to show up at some point.

That's all covered in the quotes that Beckett posted. They don't vanish into thin air, they are 'adopted' by the adult males on the rare occasions that they come to the village.

When it is revealed that a Viera kit is a male, it will be given into the care of another, that it may learn the ways of the Wood-warder - protectors of the forest.

Once every three to five summers, male Viera will descend from the trees to a nearby village to mate.

It is at this time, if there are any recently discovered jacks still living amongs the females, that the older male will make them his wards and teach them how to survive without the crutch of companionship.

[Makeda]

Most of Fran's model is ripped from FFXII, and uses a messy hybrid of the female midlander and miqo'te skeletons. She's as much a placeholder as Yugiri was in ARR.

It might be this very fact that is bugging some people. She's such a direct rip that in some ways she seems to be an older lower quality 3D model built for a prior era. Her polygons might be out of place here... I'm not sure though, I didn't play the prior game. But I do see that seems 'off' of the standard look I see in FFXIV.