Gender locked race?

[Shippuu]

You mean like the concept art that came from the devs themselves or what not?
I mean, most of us want male Viera to exist as a playable option, first and foremost, regardless of what we'll actually get. But it's not like we had absolutely nothing to base our expectations on within the context of XIV

Yeah that concept art that showed about 5 drastically different designs? So which design should it be? Especially when even the female designs shown after heavensward came out were scrapped, with only one being kind of close to what we ultimately got.

[Shougun]

Would the gender lock still be considered such a bad thing if male Hrothgar had been revealed and we were waiting on the female reveal? I think many would not mind a male only race if it meant the possibility of getting female Vieras.

Ye...s... Maybe.. Probably... I think the tune might be different but I'm sure there would still be at the end of all things a lot of people wanting to see the other genders.

But no one asked for this, while Vieras were in high demand

Are we talking genderlocked or Ronso, cause I've totally asked for Ronso . To be honest I think I might haves asked for Ronso as the counterpart to a Viera genderlock, years upon years ago... But that wasn't because I wanted a lock, just that I was like "well, I want my cake and I can see it might bake in this spot.." lol.

I prefer we get both genders :3. Good(ish) news is if they're actually locked then getting them to unlock it next year might not be so hard, especially if people like the race. Then again, wouldn't it be great if we don't need to ask for it (cause it's not locked) lol.

[BillyKaplan]

Yeah that concept art that showed about 5 drastically different designs? So which design should it be? Especially when even the female designs shown after heavensward came out were scrapped, with only one being kind of close to what we ultimately got.

You're using retrospection to beat on things people did in the past. "What did you base your expectations on?" "these concept arts" "but these concept arts were scrapped so it doesn't count!"
You moved the goalposts. And still these concept arts are in part what female Viera were requested based on, too, so I really don't get where you're getting at here other than being a naysayer for the sake of it.

[Shippuu]

You're using retrospection to beat on things people did in the past. "What did you base your expectations on?" "these concept arts" "but these concept arts were scrapped so it doesn't count!"
You moved the goalposts. And still these concept arts are in part what female Viera were requested based on, too, so I really don't get where you're getting at here other than being a naysayer for the sake of it.

I moved no such goalposts. People based their expectations on nothing that was an official or canonical design for them. Concept art is just that, concepts. To sit there and act like people wanted male viera as a whole based on concept art that showed a huge variety of different designs is disingenuous.

It's like if you showed concept art for the 5 original player races but then said they're all Hyur and used everyone's interest in those 5 races to enforce an inflated demand for Hyur, of which would only come out as a generic hyur instead of all the other flavors.

[Karl0217]

Yeah that concept art that showed about 5 drastically different designs? So which design should it be? Especially when even the female designs shown after heavensward came out were scrapped, with only one being kind of close to what we ultimately got.

It is isn't just the concept art we got though. The bug that caused us to know about the Hrothgar also showed conditional if/else statements in the code that changed NPC dialog depending on whither the player character was a male or female Viera. There were text options for both “la belle Viera” and “le beau Viera” and this is some four years after the production of that concept art. In addition, we have an NPC giving us a multi-paragraph lore dump on the lives of male Viera and their place in Viera society in game patch 4.5. So we have evidence that the concept artists, lore writers, programmers and the translation teams did work concerning male Viera.

[Shippuu]

It is isn't just the concept art we got though. The bug that caused us to know about the Hrothgar also showed conditional if/else statements in the code that changed NPC dialog depending on whither the player character was a male or female Viera. There were text options for both “la belle Viera” and “le beau Viera” and this is some four years after the production of that concept art. In addition, we have an NPC giving us a multi-paragraph lore dump on the lives of male Viera and their place in Viera society in game patch 4.5. So we have evidence that the concept artists, lore writers, programmers and the translation teams did work concerning male Viera.

This isn't a hard confirmation because such things can exist for the sake of keeping the code consistent to prevent other issues down the line. Without seeing how other gender coding works for restricting gender locked clothes etc, it may be necessary for both gender coding to exist even if only one will be used. It provides evidence that it may not be genderlocked, but it's hard from an actual confirmation.

That NPC giving us lore about male viera also uses very strong language pointing to their exclusion rather than inclusion. Statements such as "don't go looking for them, you'll just end up disappointed" and "to us, they simply do not exist to us" paint a pretty strong picture against them, regardless of fluff about their role in viera society.

[Rokke]

Would the gender lock still be considered such a bad thing if male Hrothgar had been revealed and we were waiting on the female reveal? I think many would not mind a male only race if it meant the possibility of getting female Vieras.

I would still have been mad since I have been wanting male Viera since the concept art was shown way back when. Gender locks are crap, full stop.

[Karl0217]

This isn't a hard confirmation because such things can exist for the sake of keeping the code consistent to prevent other issues down the line. Without seeing how other gender coding works for restricting gender locked clothes etc, it may be necessary for both gender coding to exist even if only one will be used. It provides evidence that it may not be genderlocked, but it's hard from an actual confirmation.

The thing is we have already seen them change these statements with the Au Ra; because French language rules dictate gender-neutral terms because of their name starting with an A. So we have seen how this coding works when there is only one gender option.

That NPC giving us lore about male viera also uses very strong language pointing to their exclusion rather than inclusion. Statements such as "don't go looking for them, you'll just end up disappointed" and "to us, they simply do not exist to us" paint a pretty strong picture against them, regardless of fluff about their role in viera society.

No, the full sentence is "thread not in the woods with hopes of finding a male Viera, for you will be met with naught but disappointment...or worse, death." Because male Viera are both xenophobic and aggressive in the extreme and that they shoot outsiders on sight in Viera territory. Oh, by the way, we are heading into Ra'tika Greatwood in Shadowbringers , which at the Fan Fest two weeks ago they implicitly stated was Viera territory.

Also when he was saying they might as well not exist, he was talking specifically about Dalmasca and not the entire world.

[redcurrant18]

Wracking my head trying to figure out how on earth they could possibly justify having no male Viera being visible. I doubt a single forest fire would be enough to kill them off, regardless of whether or not it was caused by Garleans. They couldn't be killed by Black Rose either, since if that were the case it would not only kill them but the entire female Viera village and the Nu Mou as well. I feel that in addition to them being playable, they will probably be present in the forest as potential enemies to fight or wandering npcs in far reaches of the zone. Also, what would their interactions with the Nu Mou be like? Would they help the warrior of light in taking them and their primal down since they are a threat to the forest?

[Lauront]

The thing is we have already seen them change these statements with the Au Ra; because French language rules dictate gender-neutral terms because of their name starting with an A. So we have seen how this coding works when there is only one gender option.

This should not be taken as an indication of anything other than code written for French grammatical rules. The reason this would not work with Hrothgar or Viera is they are not in scope of these rules. It's likelier than not that the code is not written with a neutral option, but instead to alter the articles etc. based on whether the next word begins with a vowel/silent h. And they'd have no reason to re-purpose it for gender locked races as it'd continue to work just fine.

On a separate note, I'm not sure why "la hyur" isn't contracted to "l'hyur".

Wracking my head trying to figure out how on earth they could possibly justify having no male Viera being visible. I doubt a single forest fire would be enough to kill them off, regardless of whether or not it was caused by Garleans. They couldn't be killed by Black Rose either, since if that were the case it would not only kill them but the entire female Viera village and the Nu Mou as well. I feel that in addition to them being playable, they will probably be present in the forest as potential enemies to fight or wandering npcs in far reaches of the zone. Also, what would their interactions with the Nu Mou be like? Would they help the warrior of light in taking them and their primal down since they are a threat to the forest?

The who now?

Our boy is becoming the WoD.