Gender locked race?

[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. >.<

[Roda]

Very possible.
Then I wonder what this "young elezen" variant can be. tbh I don't think it was really an "accidental" slip up.
If it's just a hairstyle or ear style, why the need to stay hushed over it?

I sincerely think it was a slip up. Thinking like a designer, it simply could've been a "oh I did a face inspired by alphinaud/alisae and ramble ramble nervous ramble" and YoshiP was alerted because "up up up! Assets that weren't displayed in the presentation are still under NDA! And we can't clarify misconceptions without also breaking NDA. Pls don't get fired." Remember she was very nervous, which can get people to ramble about some pretty dang irrelevant data for a bit.

[Senn]

...

It didn't seem like an accident to me but you could be right.

Just in case anyone doesn't get it, I've just been speculating, not speaking in absolutes lol

[Shippuu]

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.

I sure do. Link

Q38: In terms of new races, what kind of races are you looking into and will mixed races be introduced?

A38: I don’t think we’ll have mixed races for a while. Since it seems like Viera is popular around the world we have been proactively looking into this, but since having a rabbit male might be kind of weird, maybe we’ll look into having a separate race for the male counterpart.

One reason male viera may still be a possibility is because of the amount of work that went into viera feet and helmets. Things had to be reworked. It would be a shame to not reuse the feet and helmet adjustments for males as well. Another reason could be because of past player demand for the missing genders of roe, highlander, and miqo'te. They may be aware the player base want both genders of a race.

It's true, but at the same time, that work can also be used for some other male race that features similar feet and ear placement. We also don't fully know the extent of the accommodations they have made for the Viera feet and ears. For all we know, they could have decided to do something as extreme as simply not letting Viera show helmets they're wearing. It's an odd choice, but it would open them up to other race options that have more extreme head shapes that would have also been problematic for helmets. We'll have to wait and see when they explain whatever change it was they have made to accommodate Viera ears.

[Senn]

...

Yeah, someone mentioned the "Ronso" feet thing. They do have similar feet, so they could reuse viera feet for that. Since they mentioned a separate race in the past, this is totally possible.

[Shougun]

I sure do. Link

Q38: In terms of new races, what kind of races are you looking into and will mixed races be introduced?

A38: I don’t think we’ll have mixed races for a while. Since it seems like Viera is popular around the world we have been proactively looking into this, but since having a rabbit male might be kind of weird, maybe we’ll look into having a separate race for the male counterpart.

:O (Forgot how exact the old question was, I just thought it was like "meee..ehhh" lol).

So the question now is will he Blue Mage the Viera people lol. If Yoshi does it again then I'm going to have to reread a lot of old posts, anything he said he is going to do might just be something way down the pipe line but he will be doing XD. Of course he could change his mind too, it's not like he cant do it (but it just seems when he has a strong opinion he sticks to it).

Yeah, someone mentioned the "Ronso" feet thing. They do have similar feet, so they could reuse viera feet for that. Since they mentioned a separate race in the past, this is totally possible.

I imagine IF (not saying they are) they did something like Ronso it might not be called Ronso (just have a high inspiration from- and it would really just be "lion-like"), but yeah.. Ronso have the Viera feet and Viera hands, they also have very similar Viera hair. With their elvish like ears and tails all the systems that made Ronso-like race a pain in the booty to produce a while ago is now technically all prepared.

It's actually why I thought you could buff up a rabbit enough that it might even look like a ronso. Especially with one of the concept arts (of a Viera male) they've produced that has similar T chest hair and hair mane.

[Shippuu]

:O

So the question now is will he Blue Mage the Viera people lol. If Yoshi does it again then I'm going to have to reread a lot of old posts, anything he said he is going to do might just be something way down the pipe line but he will be doing XD.

Yeah, I mean he can certainly change his mind over 6 years. But since he was so consistent with Blue Mage, it means old comments can't be easily dismissed just for being old.

Plus, his comment was made well after they had decided to undo the 1.0 gender locks, meaning that even after they "fixed" that, he was still definitely open to a future gender locked race, with Viera especially. It's something to consider when you factor in all the other oddities that's going on with the lack of male viera being announced/shown.

[Gwenorai]

While I can imagine them being smaller than the females in height, to be the same size as elezen - not child elezen, I can't imagine them being 'cute' nor dainty looking. Specifically, because Yoshida really dislikes the idea of them being cute. He wanted them to be more beast and fierce looking. Otherwise, if they're 'cute' I think his words were along the lines that they'd just look like miqote but with bunny ears and not a tail.

I don't know. All I'm 100 percent of is that he's really against the idea of the males being anything that could be considered 'adorable' and 'cute' looking - at least without the creator of the toon going out of their way to specifically make them look like that through nice arduous work with the character creator. Meaning that 'cute' wouldn't exactly be the primary look for the face, and skinny and small would be the extremes of the slider.

[BiddyBatnana]

Now I'm confused, I don't know if I want a female Ronso or a male Viera @_@
Stop messing with my mind vile forum thread.

[Hunky]

You're putting the cart before the horse here. SE isn't trying to find reasons to justify adding male Viera even though it doesn't fit the lore, they created the lore as a justification to not add male Viera.

You can't even argue that they created that lore to justify why we've never seen any male Viera before. So far we've only seen one Viera in-game, who happened to be female. Going only by FFXIV, we'd have no reason to question why we haven't seen any male Viera, only why we've never seen any other Viera of any gender.

It's true we only ever saw female Viera in XII/TA, but that's a different continuity. There's no need for the lore of this game to justify the lore of a completely different universe. If SE wanted to add playable male Viera in XIV, they wouldn't have created an excuse not to.

This. The lore they're setting up for male Viera would justify why we won't get male Viera. The dramaturge puts on a strong emphasis on how males are incredibly rare.

This is the exact same kind of lore they created for male Miqo'te, which they used to explain why male Miqo'te were not playable. But just because male Miqo'te, female Roegadyn, and female Highlander were created doesn't mean that things have changed permanently. Let's not take things for granted. Let's not entitle ourselves into thinking we know how things will work out. At the end of the day, whatever is chosen to be implemented into the game is out of our hands.

The lore for male Viera is so keen on pointing out their rarity that it almost seems like we're being prepared to expect no playable males.

In the Game Watch interview, when asked about male Viera, Yoshida said to read the lore written for Viera again. Coupled with the fact that only female Viera were showcased, along with a PowerPoint slide titled "The Viera" featuring only females, is pretty strong evidence that Viera is going to be a female-only playable race.

And if we do get male Viera, they might just end up looking like Ronso with bunny ears. Which would be even more disappointing. The female Viera look beautiful and amazing. The males should look handsome and muscular. But because bunny ears are considered such a feminine trait, they're probably going to make the males more animal-like to offset the bunny ears.

It goes back to this archaic, out-dated, old-fashioned, close-minded idea that females equal cute and sexy and males equal brutish and savage. There are so many Asian mmos that follow this trend, and I wouldn't put it past ffxiv to do the same. One of the posters above mentioned that Yoshida said "seeing a male rabbit might be weird" when asked about new races.

If the team felt genderlocking the Ramza and Alma hairstyles was the logical thing to do, I can see them genderlocking Viera, or even designing male Viera to make them Ronso-like. Either we're getting male-only Ronso and no male Viera, or male Viera that look like Ronso. From everything I've seen, that's what I'm expecting.

I desperately hope I'm wrong, but I'm preparing myself to be disappointed.