Gender locked race?

[Hunky]

These are the same people who will be just as much up in arms if Viera isn't what they personally want or expect. They say they want male viera, but they each want specific versions of male Viera and will be just as upset if it's not their version than if they got something that isn't even Viera.

Exactly! We might just get male Viera, but it won't be what we're expecting or hoping for.

I think it's safe to say that most people are expecting male Viera to be the male equivalent of what female Viera are now. We're expecting handsome, tall, muscular bunny men. Like below.

But we're probably going to end up with something like this

All they have to do is slap the name "male Viera" on it and it's done.

Throughout this thread, Shippuu has made many good points. And that old quote from Yoshida about potentially creating a separate male counterpart to Viera shows that he is still open to implementing gender-locked races into the game.

Consider all the evidence:

1. Yoshida's old quote about creating a male counterpart race to Viera because "male rabbits might be kinda weird". Again, this goes back to this old-fashioned, close-minded idea of women equaling cute and sexy, and men equaling brutish and savage. Many Asian mmos do this, and FFXIV was one of them at some point. Just because they unlocked male Miqo'te, female Roegadyn, and female Highlander, doesn't mean they're going to not genderlock a race in the future. This can totally happen again.

2. Genderlocking is still happening in the game. Just recently, Alma and Ramza's hairstyles were genderlocked. Clearly the team still has this mentality of "this is for boys" and "this is for girls". Bunny ears are for girls, and bestial facial features are for boys.

3. Female Viera were presented as "The Viera Race" with no male in sight. If they didn't mention genderlocking, it's probably because they're well aware of the potential backlash.

4. The lore created for male Viera is the same kind of lore that was created for the previously unplayable male Miqo'te. It's as if they were preparing us to not expect males.

5. Yoshida danced around questions regarding male Viera. Instead of replying with, "We are going to include male Viera; they're just not ready yet," he simply said, "There's still Tokyo Fanfest." And Yoshi is usually good about telling us when something isn't ready.

6. In the Game Watch interview, when asked about male Viera, Yoshida suggested that players go back and read the lore in the game (the same lore that's hellbent on emphasizing the point on how incredibly rare males are).

Here are some lore screenshots.

"In other words, tread not the wood with hopes of finding a male Viera, for you will be met with naught but disappointment...or worse, death."

"The male lives alone and dies alone."

"I spent many a moon in the Desert Sapphire, and while I saw all manner of wondrous creatures, not once did I lay mine eyes upon a male Viera, nor did I hear of one living in the city. They simply do not exist to us."

Either we're getting trolled, or they're really trying to beat the idea into our heads that male Viera is not going to happen. This is the same lore that Yoshida told us to refer to when asked about male Viera.

7. The blue leaker's information has been extremely accurate. And according to the leaker, we are getting two new races. Considering that creating a new race takes a lot of time and energy, it's unlikely that we are getting two new races (unless they're genderlocked, cutting the time and energy needed in half). Remember, Yoshida himself said they would consider creating a male counterpart to Viera. So if we're getting a lion-like race, it's probably going to be Rev, Revgaji, or Ronso. That would be the male counterpart Yoshi was talking about. And considering that Ivalice might be one of the settings of the game, Rev/Revgaji might just be that male counterpart race.

Now, I truly, really, very much hope that I am wrong, and that we do get amazing, handsome, bunny men that are truly the male equivalent of the current female Viera.

But I'm scared to get my hopes up. When you have this much evidence stacked against you, getting your hopes up is a bad idea.

And this sucks because the female Viera are absolutely gorgeous. For anyone who wants to play an attractive female character, they're a dream. I just wish males were given a chance to have the same kind of sex appeal. But instead, we're probably going to end up with a bestial male counterpart. The best-case scenario is we get two races that are both not gender-locked: Viera and a bestial race. Let the bestial race fans get a chance to play as a bestial race, and let the rest of us who want to play as a drop-dead gorgeous bunny person get a chance too. But again, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

[Crushnight]

Consider all the evidence:

1. Yoshida's old quote about creating a male counterpart race to Viera because "male rabbits might be kinda weird". Again, this goes back to this old-fashioned, close-minded idea of women equaling cute and sexy, and men equaling brutish and savage. Many Asian mmos do this, and FFXIV was one of them at some point. Just because they unlocked male Miqo'te, female Roegadyn, and female Highlander, doesn't mean they're going to not genderlock a race in the future. This can totally happen again.

2. Genderlocking is still happening in the game. Just recently, Alma and Ramza's hairstyles were genderlocked. Clearly the team still has this mentality of "this is for boys" and "this is for girls". Bunny ears are for girls, and bestial facial features are for boys.

3. Female Viera were presented as "The Viera Race" with no male in sight. If they didn't mention genderlocking, it's probably because they're well aware of the potential backlash.

4. The lore created for male Viera is the same kind of lore that was created for the previously unplayable male Miqo'te. It's as if they were preparing us to not expect males.

5. Yoshida danced around questions regarding male Viera. Instead of replying with, "We are going to include male Viera; they're just not ready yet," he simply said, "There's still Tokyo Fanfest." And Yoshi is usually good about telling us when something isn't ready.

6. In the Game Watch interview, when asked about male Viera, Yoshida suggested that players go back and read the lore in the game (the same lore that's hellbent on emphasizing the point on how incredibly rare males are).

7. The blue leaker's information has been extremely accurate. And according to the leaker, we are getting two new races. Considering that creating a new race takes a lot of time and energy, it's unlikely that we are getting two new races (unless they're genderlocked, cutting the time and energy needed in half). Remember, Yoshida himself said they would consider creating a male counterpart to Viera. So if we're getting a lion-like race, it's probably going to be Rev, Revgaji, or Ronso. That would be the male counterpart Yoshi was talking about. And considering that Ivalice might be one of the settings of the game, Rev/Revgaji might just be that male counterpart race.

1. Yoshi has said many a thing in the past which he has gone back on Auto demolition on housing is one example i'm sure if i go through all old interviews i could find more his opinion may have some weight in the game design but he can be overruled by both player demand male bunny suits (took forever but we did get it against yoshi's interests) or by the devs themselves (Yotsuyu was going to have a small pipe but the artist wanted the current one and she won out it's minor compared to a race gender but still a recent point that Yoshi's opinion isn't ironclad to how the game will go)

2. This is true there will always be gender locking on gear and other cosmetics we can keep asking them to be unlock and hope we get to have them my friend wants the butler attire for his female character while i want the thavnarian dress for my male character but i do think gender locking a race is too far and i certainly will be way more vocal about it than anything else and i'm sure i'm not the only person who will gender locking Viera is going to bite them hard they will be hounded at every interview every live letter every event they do and they will be sick of it. My opinion is if your going to gender lock a race so it can be playable don't add it it will just cause more issues than having both genders available.

3. Oh no doubt they are aware of it they would be bigger fools if they weren't backlash was always going to be a thing with every announcement you cannot please everybody the amount of backlash is what you got to try and minimize gender locking is on the big end of backlash this will cause way more discomfort in people than they don't look like how i envisioned.

4 and 6. This is the same lore as miqo'te males in their rarity but its the same lore that also says in the last few generations more and more viera are growing discontent with the wood either through curiosity or maybe outside forces like the empire nothing stopping males alongside females having those feelings and leaving the wood. Also the racial divide for Dalmasca puts that male viera are more populated than any eorzean city state is with male miqo'tes there are more male miqo'tes overall but in an isolated kingdom male vieras are the more plentiful. This lore was also the most recent to be added and could've easily never mentioned males at all they deliberately gave information on both and their roles within their society and as someone earlier in the thread said if we go to the viera wood and never come across a male viera npc it would be bad storytelling and making a male viera npc but not playable is just going to create further discontent than anything else.

5. the interview gave Yoshi a way out by adding "or wait for the next fan festival" (not direct quote but the gist is there) if you are a producer and you get asked a question which you don't want to reveal info on and said question has an or wait and see you'd jump on the wait and see. when it comes to revealing content questions you have to try and back the person as far into a corner as possible where dodging the question would be as bad as no answer or in this case they are gender locked most people won't ask this sort of question as its a bit too abrasive

7. The leaker has been mostly accurate the only thing they've gotten wrong was the type of dps blu was going to be classed as but i do not remember if the leaker ever said we were getting 2 new playable races (any clarification on this will be most appreciated) they just showed a picture of a bunny and a lion people would assume 2 different races based on they are vastly different animals. The thing about the leaker though is they were fine revealing raid bosses/story events in 4.3/4.4 / the viera/blue mage but what the lion picture was too far get outta here if the rest was fine explaining the lion picture is no more over that line of spoilers than the rest of them they were deliberately as coy about it as Yoshi is about male viera atm for less of a reason.

I have many a time i am in the hopeful camp as their is nothing they could add that would be more wanted than male viera is it feels like too big a gamble to try to gender lock them now and try and give another race that has had zero hints anywhere it would be worse than au ra as at least yugiri was present since 2.2 and a new race idea was at least conceived by that point. Male viera are the most in demand for male race wanted nothing is going to top them and the disappointment that will occur if they are not added is going to cause more harm than anything else that gets added could hope to mitigate.

[Shippuu]

3. Oh no doubt they are aware of it they would be bigger fools if they weren't backlash was always going to be a thing with every announcement you cannot please everybody the amount of backlash is what you got to try and minimize gender locking is on the big end of backlash this will cause way more discomfort in people than they don't look like how i envisioned.
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People are greatly overestimating the amount of backlash a decision like no male viera would cause. It would be far less of a backlash than what they chose to do with Blue Mage. And so the argument about being hounded for it in interviews holds little weight because the same thing will happen with blue mage.

SE wasn't afraid to take a job like Blue Mage and make it limited knowing full well the backlash it would cause, they certainly wouldn't be afraid of the backlash about male viera.

[Kogekigami]

People are greatly overestimating the amount of backlash a decision like no male viera would cause. It would be far less of a backlash than what they chose to do with Blue Mage. And so the argument about being hounded for it in interviews holds little weight because the same thing will happen with blue mage.

SE wasn't afraid to take a job like Blue Mage and make it limited knowing full well the backlash it would cause, they certainly wouldn't be afraid of the backlash about male viera.

Thing is the black lash for blu being limited is unwarrented cause people were already told it couldn't work in the way ffxiv was designed. Yoshi caved to constant demands and did the best he could while opening the door to other ff job that just don't work in the mmo design. the outcry for male veira is premeture as no one has said they are genderlock and people have been told to wait for Tokyo. People on the forms need to stop jump to conclusions on nothing

[Gwenorai]

People are greatly overestimating the amount of backlash a decision like no male viera would cause. It would be far less of a backlash than what they chose to do with Blue Mage. And so the argument about being hounded for it in interviews holds little weight because the same thing will happen with blue mage.

SE wasn't afraid to take a job like Blue Mage and make it limited knowing full well the backlash it would cause, they certainly wouldn't be afraid of the backlash about male viera.

It's one thing to something regarding this with BlueMage which can be changed in the future by giving them an actual skill tree - I can honestly see this in the future and I hope it happens as limited BLU sucks. It's another thing in this day and age - and I can't believe I'm saying this because eugh it's SJW as all heck - to do gender race blocks on a race that has male and female counterparts. Holding a race hostage to one specific gender is lame; it's gross - and doesn't belong in this day and age. If they didn't want to add males then they should have gone back and rewrote the lore for FF14 to have it that males don't exist period and that they reproduce asexually. I actually despise gender locked races just like I despise gender locked classes - I'm looking at you Black Desert.

FF14 did NOT need to follow the lore of the other games and simply had these Viera be different with no males. They didn't.

I'll give you an example of a only female race that was done correctly; Asari from Mass Effect. All female biologically. Most people are fine with that because it's there lore - they reproduce with others regardless of gender and produce female children. No one is up in arms about this, no one is screaming; because that's how they were made.

Viera were never made like that. Viera distinctly has lore that talks about the male species being around in the woods and that's it. To go around and then say 'Oh, we're going to that woodland where all the males are; you know, where thousands of the males are confined into one single space that shoots outsiders on sight most of the time, but you're still not going to see them.' What literally is the point of that?

Sorry if I sound aggressive, this isn't at you - I'm angry at the very idea that if they do this how utterly BS it is. It is indeed me jumping the gun but the mere thought of it makes my blood boil. When March hits and it turns out our worrying was nothing, I'll come back and apologise for being such a baby about this and how I worried for nothing! That I assure you.

[Kaedan]

Except that the lore says that male Viera are EXTREMELY rare, which is one of the reasons they stay in the woods.

So if you suddenly see thousands of male Viera running around, that completely destroys the lore, just to satisfy a relatively small portion of the population.

[Gwenorai]

Except that the lore says that male Viera are EXTREMELY rare, which is one of the reasons they stay in the woods.

So if you suddenly see thousands of male Viera running around, that completely destroys the lore, just to satisfy a relatively small portion of the population.

I already talked about this will repost;

So I was thinking on this again and something hit me regarding numbers of Viera and how the argument of 'they're too rare'.

Lore has it that the Viera population in Ivalice is 5%. Ivalice is quite large and has a very big population. Viera aren't exactly endangered - there's no lack of them; they're just confined to woods for the most part. No plot that I recall of where their numbers are 'dying'. Though, I will remind that Viera means 'of the wood' and that if a Viera leaves the wood they are no longer considered 'Viera'

Anyway! Let's do some lame maths.
Let's say Ivalice has a population of 3million - small; considering how huge it is; and for comparison, the population of the UK - which is tiny in size regards to land mass - has a population of 66million - so for this example, I'm aiming disgustingly low. Note; I picked this number because of medieval England - even smaller than the UK! - had a population of 3million + that was with war/famine/bad hygiene etc. And of course, Ivalice is based on medieval Europe. Ivalice by estimate is more than just 10x bigger than England - that's a given.

5% of 3million is 150000 give or take. Now Viera births are 8:2 in regards to female and male. So 20% of 150000 = 30000 let's now cull the poor males because of their lifestyle. I'll be drastic and cull them by 75% which is extremely high. We now have 7500 males. That's 7500 males doing border control. 7500 males that can live up to 300+ years that breed every 3-5 summers with females, who also live up to 300+.

I have to ask; how would this spoil immersion? I honestly don't understand how people could get upset if 5 of those '7500' males happens to be in their vicinity or something. Or even ten of them or twenty etc. You're not going to see 7500 male Viera around you at one given time.

Edit: The 5% is a percentage taken from the 'Encyclopedia of Eorzea II'


Technically Male Kittybois are rarer; with a 1:20 birth rate or something.

[stormygabe]

I already talked about this will repost;

You know... With the number of times that point has been rebuffed, it's amazing how people keep bringing it up. Another good rebuttal I've seen is with white mages. Doesn't it also "completely destroy" there lore for thousands of them to be running around? Black mages too.

[Kaedan]

Where are you getting the % of population of Viera? FF12?

While Dalmasca and Ivalice are making an appearance in FF14, it is not the full world of Ivalice that FF12 and Tactics inhabit.

No offense, but made up numbers are made up numbers. I go with what was stated in the Lore of FF14, which is that the population of male Viera is SO LOW (and the birth rate abysmal), that they will force the males to stay in the woods. Also, your example doesn't take into account the fact that the % of males that leave would be very small. So lets assume there are 30,000 males (non-culled number). Since the culture is such that it's highly taboo to leave, it's not unreasonable to say that only 1% leave. Which would be 3,000 total present in all of the rest of the world. But again, it's moot since made up numbers are made up and lore is lore.

It's already bad enough that the females are going to be a playable race. That also completely breaks with the lore (even the females are supposed to be reclusive).

If SE really wants to give players male Viera, then do so, that's great. But they'd have to CHANGE the lore, otherwise there's no point to the lore at all.

[Corue]

Except that the lore says that male Viera are EXTREMELY rare, which is one of the reasons they stay in the woods.

So if you suddenly see thousands of male Viera running around, that completely destroys the lore, just to satisfy a relatively small portion of the population.

You see,
*summons a Yo-kai Watch™ minion*
while I'm all for
*summons a car mount*
male Viera and all
*kills Kefka*
I just don't think
*queues for Nier™: Automata™ raid*
they'd be lore friendly
*puts on official Garo™ glamour*
and it would ruin my immersion
*glamours a Final Fantasy XIII™ weapon*
you know?
*flicks through tomestone phone*