Gender locked race?

[Lucan_Astral]

I was really looking forward to playing a male Viera. If they decide to gender lock the classes I'm gonna have to take time off to cool down. I've not played a single game where they have a male rabbit eared demi-human type race (despite it being my favorite type of race), so was immensely looking forward to this.

Male Viera exist in Lore, albeit currently rare. So any attempt to gender lock this race can only be seen as greedy. Like with what TERA did with Elin, by releasing Elin exclusive/female exclusive classes because the majority of users who spend money on costumes are female character players. Also, this will be the first gender locked class for this game and I'm worried this is going to start FFXIV down a bad path since NOBODY wants a gender locked class at all. There's no reason for it to exist in Lore and so there must be an ulterior reason as to why they want to add a gender locked class.

So SE please don't go down this path. I don't want this game to be ruined like TERA.

[Mikki]

I was really looking forward to playing a male Viera. If they decide to gender lock the classes I'm gonna have to take time off to cool down. I've not played a single game where they have a male rabbit eared demi-human type race (despite it being my favorite type of race), so was immensely looking forward to this.

Male Viera exist in Lore, albeit currently rare. So any attempt to gender lock this race can only be seen as greedy. Like with what TERA did with Elin, by releasing Elin exclusive/female exclusive classes because the majority of users who spend money on costumes are female character players. Also, this will be the first gender locked class for this game and I'm worried this is going to start FFXIV down a bad path since NOBODY wants a gender locked class at all. There's no reason for it to exist in Lore and so there must be an ulterior reason as to why they want to add a gender locked class.

So SE please don't go down this path. I don't want this game to be ruined like TERA.

In the 1.0 version of FFXIV, miqote were female only and roegadyns as well as highlanders were male only.
Many people demanded for the missing genders to be added and Yoshi P was surprised by the demand and decided to add them in for 2.0. However, I'm more of the suspicion that it was a way to add more in the "race" department (new playable types at any rate) without having to commit to new races entirely which would require a lot more design and would require some world changing to include the new race as well (adding them with expansions is easier than with the base game). And at the time, they wanted to make good with the customers too.

I'm wondering if they might start with female only and introduce the missing gender later on. I can't believe that Yoshi P would overlook this, honestly. Surely he knows the demand is there - this race has been begged for since the game re-launched. But old interviews where he said male bunnies would be "weird" are a bit distressing. Still, after that interview they had shown concept art of male viera. Who knows. It's really a toss up at this point. But I'm sure he isn't blind to the fact that the large majority of people hate gender locking.

[MikkoAkure]

Right now I'm a bit further into the "cautiously optimistic for March news" camp. We also know nothing about the other, potentially male-only race. I understand that people can get very passionate about what they want but right now I feel like there's not enough information on whether or not there will be gender-locked races to warrant a serious discussion and that we should all cool down and wait. Leaked info without any sort of context and without the full picture ends up blowing things out of proportion. My post might end up getting dated very hard when the end of March rolls around but I think that everything is going to be OK.

I don't even understand people who are arguing against the lore. Someone crunched the numbers (all provided from lore books and the game) and determined that male moon cats are more rare than male bunnies. But regardless of all of that - PCs should have little to no bearing on the world.

Personally I've had no problem with the PCs running around potentially breaking lore. 10-30% birth rate for male miqo'te yet there's tons of man cats running around? Maybe a very large portion of male miqo'te end up being adventurers. Male moon miqo'te are already loners who don't stick around the family and just wander around, so it's perfect. Just like how if the majority of adventurers are miqo or au ra, but they're a minority of the Eorzean population, it's OK. Miqos could be drawn to adventure on a larger scale than hyur or elezen and au ra adventurers in game are most likely refugees trying to get by. Roegadyn running around with a fat chocobo head and a pig suit? Adventuring is a stressful occupation if the DRK quests are anything to go by and some people hide the toll it takes better than others. Crowd of people at Matoya? I'm sure rumors of her being found would be big news and spread among the adventurer community and they'd gather to see or talk to her since she was a known Archon.

I'm OK either way on whether male viera will be implemented or not, but nothing will be broken if a teeny-tiny population (there's got to be more than a few thousand of them for their entire race) of bunny men leave the jungle and become adventurers.

[Shippuu]

We literally have a 150+ page thread of people asking for male Viera.

No, we have a 150+ page of a lot of the same people going back and forth having discussions/debates. Even then, the official forums, reddit, etc. are not the entire playerbase.

People want this so bad they go out and make fan art, photoshops, mods, whatever, to realize their dream.

People make mods/fanart/photoshops for a lot of things, many of which should probably never be implemented into the game.

It's still not something anyone should have to do to get to play the game that they deserve from the developers.

Woah, deserve? Player's deserve to have stuff they want put into the game? Might want to pump the brakes on that entitlement. Guess I'll just start making fanart of Hrothgar so I can deserve them too.

Some variant of male Viera is better than no male Viera, which I'm sure we can all agree with.

For those who want Viera. I, for one, would rather get something else. Viera was a low hanging fruit and SE is capable of more interesting concepts.

[Penthea]

Woah, deserve? Player's deserve to have stuff they want put into the game? Might want to pump the brakes on that entitlement. Guess I'll just start making fanart of Hrothgar so I can deserve them too.

Either you're forgetting or you're unaware that SE released concept art for both male and female viera for HW. Because of this players feel like they're only getting half of what they have been waiting for for years since seeing that only female viera have been announced.

[Shippuu]

Either you're forgetting or you're unaware that SE released concept art for both male and female viera for HW. Because of this players feel like they're only getting half of what they have been waiting for for years since seeing that only female viera have been announced.

Either you're forgetting or you're unaware that the vast majority of concept art winds up on the cutting room floor and is not indicative of something's final inclusion into the game. Even the female Viera we are getting are not accurate to any of the previous concept arts shown, with only one of them being close and even then has some major anatomical differences from body type and lacking tails.

Just because they showed concept art and people decided to take it as confirmation something is going to happen doesn't mean it will.

[Penthea]

Either you're forgetting or you're unaware that the vast majority of concept art winds up on the cutting room floor and is not indicative of something's final inclusion into the game.

I am completely aware of this but there is a massive difference between unrevealed concept art leading to nowhere, and concept art you revealed to your audience leading to nowhere. When you reveal something to your audience you are giving them expectations.

It's SE's fault that there is backlash over gender locking, not the players. If SE never showed the players male viera the controversy surrounding them would be a lot smaller. Though players would still be asking for them because those that are okay with gender locked races appear to be in the minority.

[Shippuu]

I am completely aware of this but there is a massive difference between unrevealed concept art leading to nowhere, and concept art you revealed to your audience leading to nowhere. When you reveal something to your audience you are giving them expectations.

It's SE's fault that there is backlash over gender locking, not the players. If SE never showed the players male viera the controversy surrounding them would be a lot smaller. Though players would still be asking for them because those that are okay with gender locked races appear to be in the minority.

And yoshida has commented that he didn't really want to show everyone the Viera concept art because of exactly what is happening now.

I'm not saying SE doesn't shoulder some blame for why people are angry about it, but they shouldn't be held hostage just because people are angry about something. In the end it is SE's decision to make, just like it was their decision to make Blue Mage as a limited job even though they knew it would make people angry too. People in this thread continue to grossly overstate the blowback and impact this will cause if it happens.

[BillyKaplan]

And yoshida has commented that he didn't really want to show everyone the Viera concept art because of exactly what is happening now.

Your views of the matter are so twisted. some blame for why people are angry about it? What?
If the concept art was really such a taboo for Yoshida then he should never have shown the concept art in the first place. It's almost as though being transparent with your playerbase implies you're committing yourself to what you're showing them, alternatively be transparent all the way and say, out right, it will never be used - which, as far as I know, was never explicitly stated. It's like how he promised that the bunny outfit would be gender unlocked and then acted all suffering and self sacrificing whenever it kept being brought up again. That's what happens when you show your players something, let alone promise it as was the case with the bunny outfit.
If he showed it to us then he needs to grow up as a person and as a professional and deal with it. And if it was always meant to be a pointless, meaningless tease, he shouldn't have shown it. Given that he did, he should own up to it. It's not that complicated.

[Penthea]

And yoshida has commented that he didn't really want to show everyone the Viera concept art because of exactly what is happening now.

I'm not saying SE doesn't shoulder some blame for why people are angry about it, but they shouldn't be held hostage just because people are angry about something. In the end it is SE's decision to make, just like it was their decision to make Blue Mage as a limited job even though they knew it would make people angry too. People in this thread continue to grossly overstate the blowback and impact this will cause if it happens.

Being held hostage? That's a massive overstatement. It's not like people are unsubbing in protest, or intentionally creating problems in the game to get SE's attention. Not even the forums are in disarray. Sure there is a lot of controversy surrounding viera, but it can't compare to the storm of discontent Shirogane's launch brought. The forums were FULL of super active threads complaining about it. What you're labelling as extreme behaviour is actually very tame.

The forums exist for feedback and players saying they want male viera is feedback. And it's not baseless feedback either. Genderlocking has been frowned upon by the playerbase for a very long time to the point that any that was present in 1.0 was removed in 2.0, and SE have already shown us male viera.