Gender locked race?

[cicatriz313]

See, that's something that depends on how you interpret it. When I read it I didn't get that notion at all, and a lot of other people didn't get that idea either. It just looked to be laying out how the society worked. I was expecting male viera to have a culture like that just from how the race was depicted in FF XII. Reclusive forest guardians just made sense to me. I don't see how them being described that way makes them less likely to be playable. The females are described as reclusive as well.

Yeah, I mean take it as you want it. I'm sure anyone who wants male Viera will read it your way. Seems pretty obvious to me that a "times are changing" matriarch society is more likely to interact with the WoL than counterparts who live in solitude for 99% of their lives, but maybe you're right. For like the fourth time, I'm not using lore to say they're not going to be playable. I'm saying that it seems more like the lore is stating that they won't be playable than that the lore is stating that they will be playable. Overall, lore is just lore.

[Lacan]

Yeah, I mean take it as you want it. I'm sure anyone who wants male Viera will read it your way. Seems pretty obvious to me that a "times are changing" matriarch society is more likely to interact with the WoL than counterparts who live in solitude for 99% of their lives, but maybe you're right. For like the fourth time, I'm not using lore to say they're not going to be playable. I'm saying that it seems more like the lore is stating that they won't be playable than that the lore is stating that they will be playable. Overall, lore is just lore.

Yea, I get what you're saying too. I just think things are too muddled right now to make a call one way or another. I know I have a bias because I really want the male viera to be playable, but I do think they intentionally made this stuff open-ended enough for the possibility of playable male viera. They could have just as easily closed the door on that possibility but they didn't. Why mention the males at all to begin with? FF 12 went the entire game without alluding to male viera in any form. We didn't find out they were their own thing till the guidebook released. Up until then a good number of people were convinced that viera were a female only race altogether.

[Tharne]

Dramaturge is just being dramatic, hence his title. Either that or he's drunk.

He's also meant (imo) to be a "sub in" for Matsuno and the phrase "They simply do not exist to us." could imply that they do not exist for the dev team by going a little meta in the game, i.e. : We won't make them playable or not even make a model for them.
There are a lot of hints inside his monologue that points towards : You will never see them even if they exist.

I'm just saying, Yoshida said that they gave hints there about the state of Male Viera, I just don't want people to end up with a Pikachu meme face if they say that you won't be able to make Male Viera. From what we have, I expect to not get them and will be happy if we do.

[Gwenorai]

He's also meant (imo) to be a "sub in" for Matsuno and the phrase "They simply do not exist to us." could imply that they do not exist for the dev team by going a little meta in the game, i.e. : We won't make them playable or not even make a model for them.
There are a lot of hints inside his monologue that points towards : You will never see them even if they exist.

I'm just saying, Yoshida said that they gave hints there about the state of Male Viera, I just don't want people to end up with a Pikachu meme face if they say that you won't be able to make Male Viera. From what we have, I expect to not get them and will be happy if we do this way.

Oh yeah, totally. Though with Square Enix's track record. I can't see them not adding them in. It's a matter of when will they add them in.

Either they add them in 5.0 or give in to consumer demand later on. Either way, we'll be waiting and I'll keep speculating for funsies.

[Shippuu]

Oh but you have made statements about what the developers did do and why they did it. Shall we look at one of the more recent examples?

This should be interesting.

That is a unequivocally statement about why they did do something in the past and according to your little statement above you need hard evidence to prove. Where is it?

No, it isn't an unequivocal statement because it's not self evident that them undoing gender locks meant they felt like that was something that damaged the game in any significant way. Unless they come out and state that was the case, claiming such is just an assumption. I didn't make a statement saying they didn't think gender locks damaged their game, I said them fixing them isn't necessarily indicative they felt that way. And then I said they LIKELY (i.e. probable, potentially, not equivocal in the slightest) one of the things they could use as an opportunity to regain player favor by fixing.
Next.

And the reason you should provide it is because you keep demanding everybody else in this thread supply you with evidence they make a claim you dislike. Failure to do so after demanding left and right everybody else do so is hypocritical.

I ask for evidence (not demand, by the way) because this thread is filled with people making outlandish claims of what SE has or will do, often based on false information or potentially on information I am not aware of, plenty of evidence has been given to me that I did not know about and these things can change my opninion on things.
If someone makes a claim I think isn't backed up by evidence I will ask for it, because there are some pretty big assumptions here. If you make a claim and can't back it up, why should I provide evidence for a counter-claim? That's not how it works.

If it wasn't a major selling point why did you expect it majorly increase their market share in the Chinese and Korean markets? Minor selling points (especially a minor selling point found in many a game in that market) don't significantly increase market shares, major ones do.

There you go putting more words in my mouth, ironically it's the SAME word again. I didn't say it would MAJORLY affect their market share. But thank you for telling me what MY expectations are apparently? I said it was a possible design decision that COULD influence those regions more than the western regions, since people continuously talk like the JP/NA/EU playerbase are the only ones that are factored into this decision. I never said to what degree it would or could effect them, only that it was worth considering.

And statements given by a developer in a interview years prior to the concept art even being developed about how he personally disliked the concept is weaker still. Yet, you have no trouble using that back your claims.

It really isn't though. The words of the director himself, the man in charge of signing off on everything that gets put into the game, are FAR stronger than concept art that may or may not have been approved by him to be further developed. Even after they showed the concept art he went on record stating he still felt the male viera were "too cute", implying he was still not convinced on the concept of male viera, meaning potentially his artists weren't able to come up with a concept that changed his mind on the issue.
I will take the word of the director over some concept art ANY day. The concept art doesn't dictate what goes into the game, the director of the game does.

And one of the possibilities is that the coding was made because they intend both male and female Viera to playable at launch. Why should the "what if/ just so" theories you favor to explain the if/else conditional statements for male Viera player characters be weighed more heavily then those you dislike?

If all we had to go off was that specific line of coding, then I would say it would be stronger evidence, it's when that example is tempered with everything else that it becomes not as strong. There is evidence for both sides, it's just the evidence that they will be genderlocked is a bit stronger, such as the way they have handled the official reveal and information of Viera and the reality that developing two dual gendered races is a lot of work and thus less likely to be the road taken (but still possible).

And there wasn't any Au Ra in Limsa, despite the fact Limsa ships regularly docked in Kugane were Au Ra make up a sizable chunk of the population, prior to Yugiri's arrival. Nor were there any in Ul'Dah prior to Yugiri's arrival, despite the fact that Ul'Dah's largest corporation maintains a branch office in Kugane.

There wasn't any in game lore saying there wasn't though. Only that we never personally saw any doesn't mean they weren't technically supposed to be there. Part of that is due to the nature of adding things to the game. This also applies to the Dramaturge, just because he personally never saw any doesn't mean there aren't any there, however it paints a picture to not expect them. They couldn't show Au Ra because the assets didn't exist prior to that, this information is giving them an excuse to not even need to make the assets for male viera.

Fran specifically says during the quest they are watching you and if she wasn't with you they would have attacked by now. It pays not to skip cutscenes.

Whew, cool accusation I skip cutscenes. Somehow you expect us to just wander into the Raktika greatwoods without some similar plot point to lead us there apparently then? You just proved my point that there will likely be reasons we are exceptions to being allowed into the woods so the whole argument of "male viera would attack us on sight so they have to be in the game" falls apart.

We got special treatment prior in the game when we entered another militant isolationist territory, Ishgard, when we were made a ward of House Fortemps. I remember getting attacked by Ishgardian forces in the MSQ, the Dark Knight class quests, the Astrologian class quests, the Machinist class quests....

Just because other places did it doesn't mean this one will. Ishgard also doesn't have a magical forest voice that talks to all the Viera giving them more cohesion. Next.

And at the same time we might not any special treatment at all. It is just as likely the male Viera find out that the Garlean troops that attacked their homeland are looking for us and decide they can get rid of the Garleans by getting rid of us.

Certainly possible, but less likely. It's more likely they try to get our help to fend of the Empire than anything.

They specifically showed those old designs during the fan fest in Paris two weeks ago. See the 2:10:00 mark

I'm aware. They showed off some of the old concept art, but once again, none of the old stuff was actually used from what we can see implemented into the actual game. They showed the new concept art for the stuff we actually are seeing in the game. They showed the old ones to show the process from how it goes from a rudimentary design from being finalized and fleshed out.

None of this (that we know of) particularly has been shown to actually be in the game (save for potentially that hairstyle that's similar, the viera we've seen do not have that same body type however, and are lacking tails as depicted in that art, meaning while that art was similar, it wasn't the exact design they went with and that's the closest one.)



Compared to the new more finalized art they showed here which will basically be what we are getting.

[Crushnight]

Yeah, that's fair, my bad. I couldn't recall how Garuda looked in the older ones. I just remember it from XI mostly, which XIV followed a similar design (and now XV too).

Still, Shiva, Sophia, Lakshmi etc. are all clearly throwbacks to their past designs, with XIV's actually taking some liberties like making Lakshmi have a lower snake body (even if we can't really see it). So if anything, XIV has made some of them a bit less feminine/waifu.

Yea dw lotta games i never played ff11 but when i saw garuda in ff14 i had to look back to see where the female type came from as only saw monster garuda prior XD Lakshmi is a weird one the only other instance of Lakshmi is ff6 The goddess of the painting that the demon Chardanok took over we have that in Sigmascape so ff14 Lakshmi is actually unique in ff series hence why her full name is Sri Lakshmi but despite saying she has a snake tail we never see it a design change that Yoshi wanted it does make you wonder how much has been changed due to his opinion suddenly little more scared for male viera reveal :S

[redcurrant18]

The people want male Viera ♪(๑ᴖ◡ᴖ๑)♪ and we won't shut up until we get them ♪٩(✿′ᗜ‵✿)۶♪

[cicatriz313]

Well, at least pictures is a better way to ask for them than whiny complaining.

[Shippuu]

You can't say anything in this thread without at least 10 academic sources.

Do you have a source for that rule?!?!

We flew in, had Fran with us, and immediately walked into a gigantic monster-riddled building. That's a big difference between just waltzing around the jungle solo and picking some flowers to make crafting tea.

I mean, there was plenty of story threads left by Fran such as who she serves. That person couldn't possibly find reason to invite us into their woods with a special sanction like we've gotten time and time before with all kinds of places normal people/outsiders couldn't tread.

There is some real stubbornness if you refuse to see that Suzaku and Ultima are beautiful women, especially when you look at their male counterparts who have been monsterized far more than they have.

They still had monstrous forms. I took umbrage to the comment that implied SE makes no female enemies with monstrous forms. I should have read more into the context of that discussion but I didn't as the topic in general doesn't interest me on how SE models female enemies. I only commented because of the broad statement that there were no female "enemies" with monstrous forms because there are, and they're more than just "poroggo #55" tier of enemies.
I'll back out of that discussion though since I wasn't invested into the intended context/scope of it.

Yea dw lotta games i never played ff11 but when i saw garuda in ff14 i had to look back to see where the female type came from as only saw monster garuda prior XD Lakshmi is a weird one the only other instance of Lakshmi is ff6 The goddess of the painting that the demon Chardanok took over we have that in Sigmascape so ff14 Lakshmi is actually unique in ff series hence why her full name is Sri Lakshmi but despite saying she has a snake tail we never see it a design change that Yoshi wanted it does make you wonder how much has been changed due to his opinion suddenly little more scared for male viera reveal :S

Yeah, Yoshida often does a lot of things that are his own personal tastes, even going against Final Fantasy staples/history if he feels strongly about something. Samurai was a solid example of this, especially fleshed out in a recent interview where he basically said his favorite movies regarding Samurai was always the ronin type and that it was why he made Samurai in 14 follow that archetype when they've been typically depicted as being the armored versions in the vast majority of Final Fantasy games. He definitely picks and chooses when he wants to be faithful to the franchise etc and isn't above putting his personal tastes above other things (which I can't blame him for, he's human after all and the director of the game, he gets to make those choices even if I disagree with them).

[Lacan]

I just hope Yoshi wouldn't deprive the entire playbase of something just because he didn't care for it personally. I mean, I have a lot of respect for the guy. I can't see him doing that.