Gender locked race?

[Rokke]

But people think before writing here? Interestingly, the complaint comes from people who have never played a game based on Ivalice's universe.

The male scallops exist but to this day in no game have been shown to the point that the community itself say they are a myth. Or directly the race is Genderlock like in the other games or even they can not show the masculine version because it is much more difficult to do than the feminine one.

It hardly matters that the community thinks they're a myth when - in canon lore - males exist both in Ivalice games and in XIV.

[Jaywalker]

Seen some people talking back and forth on this, basically I'm with folks who are impatient about whether there are male viera/what they'll look like but honestly I think this'll work out based on track record. While it's not perfect, SE does pretty well about paying attention to fan demand and making stuff that a significant number of people are hyped for. After all, that benefits them and can get more players. It sounds like both in Japan and abroad people really do want male Viera, and what's more I think they know that between FFXII and the foreshadowing of FFXIV people are in heavy suspense about it. I think revealing female Viera alone first is most likely a tactical move to ramp suspense up so that when they do reveal males people are even more ecstatic and spread the word a lot.

The reason I'm so confident males will end up in the game is frankly because female Roegadyn and male Miqo'te are in the game when they initially weren't. When they weren't there it bugged people, and when they were allowed it got a very positive reaction. Male Miqo'te have been featured with reasonable prominence in the game too, there have been a solid number of male Miqo'te NPCs. Same with female Roegadyn. And what's more, player base I've seen way more female than male Roes with a roughly even number of male/female Miqo'tes.

If male Viera weren't in the initial release of Shadowbringers, honestly that's an obvious thing that would dampen enjoyment/excitement for a lot of fans. Not the reaction SE wants. If they did a belated release of male Viera it would stagger the interest and possibly make less impact for being spread out since not as many people would be paying attention after an initial disappointment of no male Viera upon initial release.

They have confirmed been planning out male Viera from concept art too. It has definitely crossed their minds that this would be useful to include in FFXIV. It's just a question of when we get confirmation and what that confirmation looks like imo.

Also. If they do go just as fanservice-y for males as they do females, that's gonna be a bit of a gamble on their end. While SE is pretty awesome about allowing male fanservice in games, having a whole race (and possible trailer) where that is showcased would be newish ground by comparison to races where it's just female fanservice. It'll be interesting to see if they go full speed ahead with it or play things more cautious.

(And I could be wrong on all of this of course, just me speculating.)

[Nayout]

Not really?? ARR had the standard in-name-only cameos that pretty much every other FF game had... Every other part of the cameo had something that made it unique to XIV.
Unless shiva in every other game was an elf lady who got vored by her dog-dragon husbando.

I'm not talking about things that are seen in all the FF, I'm talking about things that you specify from other FFs stuck in here like Crystal Towe, Ivalice, Etc. It's one of the reasons why a small part of the community complains, that it It abuses a lot of using content from other FFs.

Even the main story itself resorts to characters like Elidubus of FFT
https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Elidibus_(Tactics)

Bad example. ARR is the game that broke away from the convention that FFXI and 1.0 set with Mi'qote(/Mithra) and Roegadyn(/Galka) being gender-locked.

I speak of the content, not of the races.

That's a lot of distance you leap to try and make a point. I HAVE played the final fantasies based on Ivalice. All you are doing is trying to marginalize the complaints of others by indicating they don't know what they are talking about. You can't make such a leap and say that the people unhappy are those that don't know better because they havn't played a specific game. Statistically you are almost guaranteed to be wrong, as I just proved since I did play the games and am not happy with the no male viera.

I mean that nobody should have surprised the fact that this class could be Gender-Lock and is one of the reasons why some of us did not want it as a playable race, we preferred something "new"

In my guild we discussed this and in the end we considered that the class would be Gender Lock and we expected a surprise that can still come.

It hardly matters that the community thinks they're a myth when - in canon lore - males exist both in Ivalice games and in XIV.

The existence of the race was confirmed with the definitive guide of FFXII that is why the myth.

[New_Game_Plus]

The disappointment will be real if it's female only.

[Beckett]

-

Some cynical marketing math

Reveal female Viera: Big points!
Later reveal male Viera: a few points

VS

Reveal female Viera: Big points!
Later reveal an entirely new playable race: Big points!
(but both races are gender locked): some lost points
6.0 announced, reveal male Viera and female of the other race: Big points again!

They can get more hype out of two gender locked races than they could from just unlocked Viera. Plus down the road they can say they "listened to the fans" and add the missing genders for even more hype.

[Seraphor]

Some cynical marketing math

Reveal female Viera: Big points!
Later reveal male Viera: a few points

VS

Reveal female Viera: Big points!
Later reveal an entirely new playable race: Big points!
(but both races are gender locked): some lost points
6.0 announced, reveal male Viera and female of the other race: Big points again!

They can get more hype out of two gender locked races than they could from just unlocked Viera. Plus down the road they can say they "listened to the fans" and add the missing genders for even more hype.

Or, one full race now, another full race in 6.0.

[Iscah]

Even the main story itself resorts to characters like Elidubus of FFT
https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Elidibus_(Tactics)

My understanding was that it's a name reference, but not close to being the same character.

[Jaywalker]

Some cynical marketing math

Reveal female Viera: Big points!
Later reveal male Viera: a few points

VS

Reveal female Viera: Big points!
Later reveal an entirely new playable race: Big points!
(but both races are gender locked): some lost points
6.0 announced, reveal male Viera and female of the other race: Big points again!

They can get more hype out of two gender locked races than they could from just unlocked Viera. Plus down the road they can say they "listened to the fans" and add the missing genders for even more hype.

Catch is though, they said that at least presently they plan for Viera to be the last race. I do think it's possible they could change their minds, since people won't be expecting/demanding another race so anything they do there would be a nice surprise. But making new races takes a lot of work in part because they need to make sure everything is smoothly customizable and all past armors etc. fit. So I think it's reasonable to figure that if this does happen, it won't be for a good while. So if that's a thing then that means there would be no gender locked male race for a long time and a higher risk of backlash or lost points.

Additionally, I actually think what it comes out to is more like this.

Reveal female Viera: Points, but not as big. People were aware for a long time that they were going to be the addition, it was just a question of how that would be done. People know what Viera are like more or less. There aren't any huge surprises but there's a stable number of points since it was expected at a certain point. That expectation was built up deliberately by SE with things like the bugs bunny shirt and concept art and whatnot.

From there you've got two possibilities imo.


Later reveal male Viera: Something totally new, somewhat surprising since gender locking does happen, and distinct to FFXIV. Hype that could have been small points is instead made big points because of novelty factor.

Never reveal male Viera: A portion of the fanbase gets super pissed, feels cheated, the crowd who complains about Viera being just humans with ears and such attached gets louder and Viera get further diminished because they're also gender locked so it's not even entirely humans with ears. It's less. Some people will still be happy of course, but it is more likely to be a controversial thing where they didn't need the controversy and could have just had a resounding success. Why take points off yourself?

[Jaywalker]

One more thing off last post!


They already did the strategy you mentioned with 1.0 successfully, and you're not wrong on it being a respectable strategy. However, I think it hinged on there being two gender locked races out the gate, and a huge overhaul of the game itself besides. Making a race is a lot of time, money, and effort for them. I don't think we're as likely to see a repeat there. Plus, situation with Viera's a bit different given it seems like they're trying to build in a new recurring thing into final fantasy lore (like Cid repeating across games as different characters for instance) so no one's entirely sure what that'll mean yet. The repeat does need something to differentiate otherwise it just becomes redundant with past appearances and gets stale, and not establishing a precedent for difference early risks making the first reccurance age poorly.

Hope this makes sense!

[Yhoiryo]

I wish people would stop being so upset that there's a possibility that this might be a one gender race.

People calling out SE and what not saying it's lazy and pandering, only giving people the fan service. Like really? Can you please take a step back and look at what your saying? I'm not saying I'm against having male and female viera in FFXIV but it just seems so arbitrary that people have to keep throwing these kind of things at SE. We could have no new race going into shadowbringers and I'd be perfectly fine with it, in fact if this turns into such a huge mess about the fact that a race in an mmo game is only locked to one gender (be it male or female) than I wish we'd never been given them in the first place.