Gender locked race?

[RoroCookies]

Do you remember when YoshiP said that about a separate male race? I don't want to quote it at people without a source but that's very interesting.

"The issue with the Viera is that, if you look at them, they're basically humanoid save for their long rabbit ears and their heels. We already have a mostly humanoid race with animal ears in the Mi'qote. When we looked at those initial Viera concepts, it just seemed like a Mi'qote with bunny ears instead of cat ears. It simply wasn't different enough. Especially when we did the male designs… they didn't look beastly enough, they were just a little too cute. We wanted to make something that was original to the Final Fantasy series, and to do that, we decided to step away from the Viera.

I was actually strongly against showing the Viera concept art at the event we unveiled the Au Ra at. I knew that people would be like “why didn't you include them?!” [laughs] We feel we have a good thing with the Au Ra, though. If you don't like them, though, let us know and we'll take it into consideration with the next race we bring in."
From: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/the...n-sense/.91021

I think its also worth noting that he didn't want to add Viera either yet here we are several years later.
However, I feel like I'm missing another interview that touches base with this.

Edit: Person above me found it.

[Roda]

"The issue with the Viera is that, if you look at them, they're basically humanoid save for their long rabbit ears and their heels. We already have a mostly humanoid race with animal ears in the Mi'qote. When we looked at those initial Viera concepts, it just seemed like a Mi'qote with bunny ears instead of cat ears. It simply wasn't different enough. Especially when we did the male designs… they didn't look beastly enough, they were just a little too cute. We wanted to make something that was original to the Final Fantasy series, and to do that, we decided to step away from the Viera.

I was actually strongly against showing the Viera concept art at the event we unveiled the Au Ra at. I knew that people would be like “why didn't you include them?!” [laughs] We feel we have a good thing with the Au Ra, though. If you don't like them, though, let us know and we'll take it into consideration with the next race we bring in."
From: https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/the...n-sense/.91021

I think its also worth noting that he didn't want to add Viera either yet here we are several years later.
However, I feel like I'm missing another interview that touches base with this.

Edit: Person above me found it.

"viera is just like miqo'te but with rabbit ears!"
-immediately introduces female au ra which is miqo'te with horns which also is both too cute and not beastly enough compared to their male counterparts and concept arts-

YoshiP's interviews on viera and races in general have always annoyed me. =_=

I'm really hoping my impressions will be proven wrong with the introduction of a smaller, non-beastly, but still cool male viera to balance out what the DID to female au ra, but the pit in the bottom of my stomach says that I'll be disappointed again. >.<

[Nestama]

"viera is just like miqo'te but with rabbit ears!"
-immediately introduces female au ra which is miqo'te with horns which also is both too cute and not beastly enough compared to their male counterparts and concept arts-

YoshiP's interviews on viera and races in general have always annoyed me. =_=

I'm really hoping my impressions will be proven wrong with the introduction of a smaller, non-beastly, but still cool male viera to balance out what the DID to female au ra, but the pit in the bottom of my stomach says that I'll be disappointed again. >.<

I mean, he wasn't wrong... granted the Viera are if Miqo'te were able to be as tall Elezen.

It's more likely they'll "break" the lore to have male Viera rather than break the entirety of the start of ARR to have a playable beast tribe race.
I'm not buying that we're getting Ronso.

And yet: Ul'dah has two Mamool Ja hanging around (if you unlock BLU), Limsa Lominsa has the New World beastmen (Goblins, Mamool Ja, Qiqirn) and in the Halloween event, Gridania had a Lupin (though they thought he was a guy in a costume).
I think the only Beastmen not allowed in the city states are native to Eorzea.

Yup! I said before but also you can make hellsguard roegadyn look like big cats anyway which just makes it more redundant. lion people would be silly imo.

A furless lion with a human face... sure. Totally more redundant than Au Ra females (Miqo'te with horns) and Viera (Elezen-Miqo'te hybrid with rabbit ears).

[Jaywalker]

A furless lion with a human face... sure. Totally more redundant than Au Ra females (Miqo'te with horns) and Viera (Elezen-Miqo'te hybrid with rabbit ears).

:/ Hey, lets take it down a few notches. If we have a difference of opinion that's fine. You don't have to agree with me. But lets have a chill, straightforward conversation as two fans with zero control over what SE will do regardless. Alright?

I remember you said you want to play a beast race previously, and I get that's your preference. The way Final Fantasy XIV is set up there is a divide between beast races and humanoid races for player characters. I do think that having headpieces, chestpieces, etc. available to equip over humanoid frames that allow for players to look like a legit beast character would be a good thing. I'd even go so far as to say I think it would be neat if it was dyable and had multiple possible gear options, because that would be rad and I bet you're not the only one who'd enjoy that. However, one thing I've noticed in character creators and that I suspect would especially be the case in final fantasy--when you go completely animal with facial features, it becomes harder to tell faces apart outside of color scheme. This doesn't mean zero differences, but it's not as immediately apparent to most people unless they really try. For a game that pays so much attention to different glamours and subtle differences in human facial features, a project like that seems like it would result in SE spending a lot of time, money, and effort on something that most people might not notice or choose in terms of individualization. Given that across MMOs there is a trend for more humanoid and conventionally proportioned races being more popular, that is potentially a huge gamble for them that pragmatically might not pay off. Additionally, within the game having what amounts to a playable beast tribe it would also be unusual to see a lot of facial variation when all other beast tribes use the same face model generally. That double standard would be pretty weird and doesn't seem to be the focus of this specific game.

When it comes to player character races, I've been discussing characters that are ultimately humanoid. If you have an egyptian god-type character with an animal head on a human body positioned next to two different human characters, that's a different frame of reference than if you are comparing the two human characters exclusively. All three might have distinct silhouettes, but then you start getting questions about whether or not the cast and world designs are sufficiently cohesive, whether foiling between body types is done effectively, so on and so forth. That can be tricky enough with just humanoids. Throw in total non-humanoids, it's an added level of complexity for a game that already incorporates a lot of complicated design directions.

[Jaywalker]

There's cohesion among beast races as a whole. The fact that their faces in-game are generally the same is part of that. There's also cohesion among humanoid races, with a high degree of variation shown consistently. If SE had chosen to do variation for every beast race character we saw then that would also be cohesive because the variation would be employed with consistency. If all humanoid races had the same faces, again it would be consistent. At the end of the day, consistency is important to world building and creating a sense of immersion. As things stand, SE has done a lot and ultimately chose not to implement a huge range of facial options on beast races.

I'm not saying a lion beast race would be silly. I'm saying IMO it would be as the additional humanoid race. We've done cat people. Au Ra, to my understanding, were more intended to be a parallel to tieflings. They were however interpreted through an aesthetic that people read as draconic or lizardlike. It wound up being closer to miqo'te than I think optimizes both races. It just seems like a missed opportunity to me. Viera I've already said I would prefer to go in a more alien looking route, but since the features they chose emphasize thinness and height I don't mind so much. It stands out next to the other humanoid races so far as body type is concerned.

I hadn't voiced my opinion on Au Ra females before this post. I do think it would've been more interesting if SE had gone with the original design for them, but suspect their choice to make them cute was because they weren't sure how many more races would happen. I think they probably did audience tests with concept art, and if I had to guess would imagine they found that Au Ra designs were popular but that cute designs for women were more popular than their fierce designs. So they adjusted. In terms of stature, female Au Ra and female Miqo'te are essentially the same and I consider that a pity. I'd prefer if they tried for more variation going forward and think it would be more beneficial since it prevents races from competing for the same tonal niche.

We don't know all the Viera facial options. There's a single default face for Miqo'te that looks similar to the face we saw in the trailer. I don't think Viera look like Elezen at all. We don't have any tall, narrow builds. Elezen are regularly cited as having weird proportions with insanely wide shoulders. Viera females at least don't have that. We do not have an outright thin and streamlined race outside of Viera. We also don't have short but burly, but I think tonally that can be tricky to use to its best advantage. Viera potentially can fill the streamlined body type, and the higher ears add to the elongated vertical impression. It's a different silhouette.

Me saying adding a lion humanoid race on top of everything else seems silly was not intended as a slight to you. It wasn't me going "I don't want you to have things that make you happy". I think there might be another route to get there that might work better though.