Gender locked race?

[Shippuu]

I agree with the point regarding rank and rule. So yes Yoshida can overrule. But that does bring up another question; he's very high up, and he represents Square. Regarding something that is as touchy as gender locking a race in our times. He reverted it once and was met with universal praise. While bringing it back, that's something that isn't going to meet with approval but seen as a backwards view. Yes, he'll be sticking to his guns - but in the end, it's going to hurt his image and squares. Because yet again, it's a backward view and people will glom on that. All it takes is folks to broadcast, Twitter, Reddit, Twitch etc.

Here's that assumption that a gender locked race being added to the game will somehow cause this very successful game to suddenly catastrophically fail? He reverted the gender locks before because 1.0 did fail to the point of damaging the Final Fantasy brand. He needed to do whatever he could to regain favor, and he did so by fixing as many of the complaints as he could.
Once again people are greatly overestimating the kind of impact this would have. He's still adding the most requested race, and that's Viera that have only ever been shown as female. It's a much smaller demographic who wanted male viera, and if he thinks a brand new race would be better for marketability (especially when his primary goal is to get new players) then taking a chance on something different may pay off better than any small negative hit he might take.

Now that backlash could be big or small, but the backlash is backlash. We only see a small amount of it regarding BLU, I've seen so much more in discords, twitter, Reddit and other social media outlets. TLDR; the forums are just a small part of it. People are screaming all over the place regarding BLU, and I imagine they will listen, they have to since the class is in such a sorry state.

Except he's come out saying Blue Mage was still a success, with something like 70% positive. So your personal anecdotes on how much complaining is going on may not be an accurate picture (nor could SE's statement on Blue Mage being positive).

I think the backlash would be considerable regarding male Viera.

It would be loud for a little bit, but would certainly be far from "considerable". In the end he could easily just net brownie points again by implementing them in the future if it really was that bad of a situation.

While it's acceptable in Eastern MMOs; it isn't so much in Western MMOs, and that's where the money will haemorrhage.

Huge assumption. The game won't hemorrhage money if they don't put in male viera. This is some seriously overexaggerated doomsaying. There are plenty of MMO's on the market that have done just fine even with gender locking.

Western MMOs do not have gender locks - why? Demographic, political correctness, etc.

I mean, they do, one of the biggest upcoming western made MMO's is Crowfall which has had great success in crowdfunding (showing people are willing to finance it) and it has both gender and race locks to classes. Other western MMO's have done it in the past and you'd be hard pressed to prove it was because of gender restrictions caused them to fail and not because of plenty of other issues.

Business; in the end, this is all a business. Money matters. A new race will come, that's for certain. We have Viera, and that's a lot of money in Fantasias and the likes. A lot of money. Male Viera done 'correctly' close to the female but not straying too much; more money. A race that hasn't been shown or previewed or hinted at seems like more of a gamble in regards to that income.

As I mentioned above, they want to attract new players, potentially people who have never played a Final Fantasy game in their life. By this alone, they may be more willing to try something new in order to attempt to appeal to a wider or untapped demographic. A new, more unique race could potentially do this and be more marketable than playable bunny guys.

In the end, gender locking will always be something that takes away from the freedom of the player who is affected by it. It stings even more in an RPG - and even more so in an MMORPG as there is no hiding from the choice they made. And while we can take the lumps and deal with it - there is no reason why those who were slighted should stay silent about it.

Everything they add to the game can negatively affect one player or another. Adding jobs as certain roles takes the freedom from players as well. Something that's almost purely only cosmetic like a player race, is less impactful than jobs/classes.
And no one is saying anyone should stay silent about anything. By all means make noise if they don't happen. I'll be sympathetic for those who wanted it if it doesn't come. But there will also be people who would probably be happy to get something other than male viera if they weren't interested in Viera anyways.

I actually don't recall one game where the developer hasn't teased an upcoming playable race. I honestly can't think of one. I'm sure there's some out there? But really, I can't think of one. Does anyone recall a developer doing this, ever? I'm actually curious if this is a business practice some developers do?

I think you're conflating teasing a player race in general, to direct in-game teasing. I was talking specifically about the argument that no new race could possibly be added to the game because there's nothing in the current lore/game that hints towards it. (Which isn't necessarily true anyways, there could be hints and we just don't realize it.)
World of Warcraft is a prime example, when they announced their allied races and pulled a new one out of no-where basically in the Void Elfs. They didn't exist until you did the unlock scenario in game that showed their creation.
Guild Wars could be an example of this depending on how you consider Guild Wars 1 to Guild Wars 2, where they made up a brand new race that wasn't anywhere in Guild Wars 1. Could be argued they're different games, but part of the same IP and story/setting.
Adding races to MMO's isn't a particularly common practice anyways because it's a ton of work, so examples will be few and far between of either way.

I honestly thought it was a given to communicate with your player base regarding such things; especially when the new playable race is locked behind a paywall. It gives them time to prepare or set aside funds. I know people who got HW just so they could play Au'ra when they only wanted to test the base game.

Did your friend buy it before they even announced Au Ra? Did they buy it purely on the fact Yugiri was in the game? It'd be no different with this potential new race. It'd be announced and advertised.
They'd have 3 months to hype up any new race, combined with the fact the next fanfest will be close to the time they would be releasing the benchmark anyways. A new race would be advertised and the word would be out there.

I can't imagine just starting up my game and suddenly wham, a new race.

Yeah, you're definitely mistaking that I was talking about a build up/hints in game leading up to the announcement of the race.