Gender locked race?

[wereotter]

Creating dimorphic clans is a lot of extra development, especially if you consider the lion-like race (assuming the leak is accurate) with male and female counterparts for each, that's basically the equivalent work of designing three races. There's a reason that the Au Ra races are (mostly) just palette swaps of each other, that's because it creates less design work. As is the only dimorphic race we have right now are the hyur, and when you consider the highlanders were male only to start with, that makes more sense. Going into 2.0 they didn't design a dimorphic race, they just added a female option to the highlanders and classified them both as hyur.

Creating a tall and a short version of viera isn't impossible, but you do have to consider in how much additional work that would have been for the development team in determining how likely that option is when it's implemented. Based off the trailer we've seen, I'm willing to bet we just have one clan that's darker skinned and one clan that's lighter skinned rather than a tall clan and a short one. But I could be proven wrong once we get all the expansion information.

[Melichoir]

Creating dimorphic clans is a lot of extra development, especially if you consider the lion-like race (assuming the leak is accurate) with male and female counterparts for each, that's basically the equivalent work of designing three races. There's a reason that the Au Ra races are (mostly) just palette swaps of each other, that's because it creates less design work. As is the only dimorphic race we have right now are the hyur, and when you consider the highlanders were male only to start with, that makes more sense. Going into 2.0 they didn't design a dimorphic race, they just added a female option to the highlanders and classified them both as hyur.

Creating a tall and a short version of viera isn't impossible, but you do have to consider in how much additional work that would have been for the development team in determining how likely that option is when it's implemented. Based off the trailer we've seen, I'm willing to bet we just have one clan that's darker skinned and one clan that's lighter skinned rather than a tall clan and a short one. But I could be proven wrong once we get all the expansion information.

While i think its likely this will be the case, I also think its likely people will find that disappointing. Thats been a consistent criticism I think of many of the races. Heck, even when it comes to AuRa, the biggest difference is scale/horn color and those facets are locked (which is also unfortunate.) I think people want some distinguishing features between the clans and not just skin recolors with very slight facial changes. But as you said, its probably most likely going to be just that. Oh well.

[Lauront]

It all depends on whether the Hrothgar are real and also what they end up being. If they're not an additional race, I'd say there's greater scope to experiment with dimorphic Viera subraces. I wish they'd done it with au ra. I understand it's not the easiest thing to do, but unfortunately if it isn't done at the outset it's unlikely it'll ever happen.

Two distinct Viera subraces and Hrothgar, all with no gender lock, would be considerable work. At the moment, I'd be happy with just avoiding a gender lock and getting Viera approximating the art I posted. Anything else would be a bonus.

[Melichoir]

Two distinct Viera subraces and Hrothgar, all with no gender lock, would be considerable work.

Keep in mind that they wouldve had to have been working on Frans model months (Atleast 6) before the cutscenes we see for OM were given to us. Considering this, and considering that there was fan requests for Viera in Heavensward, it is possible that Viera have been in production a loooooooooooooong time and were slowly being built up. It's not impossible for there to be 2 races if Viera were already in the works since HW, especially if htey needed to modify armor and other things in the game for them to work. That menas production on them couldve been in the works for a long long time. Not saying that is the case, but its a possibility.