Gender locked race?

[Gwenorai]

I don't think you're considering a potential story element they could be using with that particular burning wood. Male Viera are already very rare and staunch defenders of the wood. If a significant threat were to approach the woods, it would make sense for them to gather to defend it, no? And if that so happens to gather the majority of those already rare males into one spot to defend their home? Then a sudden massive inferno would make short work of them potentially. This would be a powerful story hook that would not only give female viera a tragic element if the vast majority of their already small male population was eradicated, but would further solidify even more of an excuse to not include playable male Viera.

We know SE isn't afraid to gut punch the players with tragic stories, after all.

If that happened then Ooff, I think the females have a huge problem on their hands than isn't just the loss of the wood. They're going to end up going the way of panda - well, barring halfbreeds of course.

But even with that, it wouldn't eliminate the chance of there being a playable male. Due to the whole time bubble. The male Viera would have left the wood before the blaze and the huge destruction. I mean - come to think on it. Isn't the story of ARR to Stormblood around a year? A year is very recent and especially goes with the past tense that the dramaturge uses regarding Viera - especially with the dramaturge being Yasumi Matsuno.

And while I'm not 100 percent confident because ah, the fickleness of man, I am very much certain that the concept artists of the game as well as Yasumi Matsuno - the creator of Viera - to come up with a male image that he likes. The lion head speculation - since it was a literal lion head seems to make a lot of sense and goes with previous concept art shown.

And of course, them saying 'this is the last race' makes me wary to the idea that they'd just slap in another with zero hints of another coming. There has been zero hints of Ronso or Rev - and they're already established.

And last but not least and the big stretch question.
If Yoshida doesn't like male rabbits, why wear a Bugs bunny shirt? Why didn't he wear a Lola Bunny shirt - the female counterpart to Bugs? I mean there's bound to be shirts of her - a whole generation of young lads had a thing for Lola - space jam anyone? Heck, why didn't he wear a Tsukuyomi shirt?

xD Stupid question but you know, food for thought.

[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.

[Remus]

I'm of the opinion there won't be Male Viera. So far the leaks have been correct in every aspect of what jobs we will get and what alphascape bosses (they called the last boss Adam and Eve and then we learned in a interview Koji mentioned internally they were called Adam and Eve but now changed to M&F).It also mentions Viera and a lion race will come this expansion and with how they annoucned Viera wouldn't surprise me the other is Male only. They mentioned this most likely being the last race they add and I guess this would be the best way to appease the most popular ones requested. If the leak was proven wrong I would perhaps think Male Viera might be coming but so far the leak has been correct in most ways besides how BLU was implemented but they said it will be here before the expansion and it arrived in 4.5. The leak even mentioned Minfillia would be the centre piece of the expansion before they even announced the expansion itself.

The only things that have not been confirmed from the Leak yet is Dancer (healer) and the lion race.

[GenericMagus]

I think it's possibly best to accept that what we're given at the moment is that male Viera are unlikely. Not impossible, unlikely. It doesn't matter how much lore try to change or work with it, or have one of the original people on it, alongside how far back Yoshi said how he envisioned him, alongside leaks that been highly accurate, and how he handled Blue Mage under same circumstances.

Prepare to be disappointed come fanfest, brace yourselves for it. As a Blue Mage you have my sympathy for whatever is released.

[Taykawai]

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.

With the Q&A answers that we got plus the leaks, its about 99% confirmed that the races will be gender locked.
The question is that the leaker said "close" when asked about ronso as the other race (lion + bunny picture), rev is also a feline like race, its from Ivalice and is more likely to be made to look like a young elezen than the ronso. I probably will bet in rev or a entire new race for the next revel.

[Crushnight]

i wonder if we do get male viera that the lion-esque mane is just a hairstyle because if it isn't that is going to look weird with the shorter hair options :s

[xbahax92]

Nobody asked for Revs. Nobody even wants them. People would prefer Ronsos more than Revs right now. And while Ronsos have nothing in common with Ivalice nor Dalmasca, I doubt that any of them will be the male part.
You saw what happened to Au Ra in the artwork right?
They were more draconic, they had so much more scales. Their arms were covered literally in them, some horns were actually on their foreheads. They simply got humanized so hard because of said limitations.
I doubt the new race will be anything beasty, but more with beasty features. Even if theyre not 1:1 bun boys vs bun girls, its up to the creator to decide how they will look and if they're dimorphic or not.
I doubt they would repeat a mistake and create gender locked races. This would only lead to much more disappointment and frustration. They could of said no to Vieras to just avoid creating male vieras, and went with another new race. But they didnt.

[Fland]

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.

I don't get it. Why is having male rabbit weird?