Gender locked race?

[Lauront]

Their approach to adding in-game races is partly to blame there. Most of the beast tribes look entirely homogeneous and you can't tell the difference between male or female in most cases. They would have to do a better job differentiating the race's NPCs to make it easy to add it later, but doing that could give away the surprise given the precedent they've set, unless they did it on a broader scale, which would be costlier... adding differentiation later, meanwhile, would be jarring. TBH, I think their way of adding new races leaves a lot to be desired, and I hope they learn from this (and WoW's approach) going forward for their next MMO.

[Nestama]

Their approach to adding in-game races is partly to blame there. Most of the beast tribes look entirely homogeneous and you can't tell the difference between male or female in most cases. They would have to do a better job differentiating the race's NPCs to make it easy to add it later, but doing that could give away the surprise given the precedent they've set, unless they did it on a broader scale, which would be costlier... adding differentiation later, meanwhile, would be jarring. TBH, I think their way of adding new races leaves a lot to be desired, and I hope they learn from this (and WoW's approach) going forward for their next MMO.

Well if WoW could do it with Tauren, Pandaren and Worgen and GW2 with their Charr, then I'm sure FFXIV could as well... so long as it's the WoW and GW2 way and not the way Tera or any MMO that makes the males look monstrous in appearance and the females sexy lady/waifus with animal bits. It's so stupid when MMO's do that.

[Lauront]

Yes, the difference with WoW, GW2 and TES:O is that they explicitly intended for the races to be playable. Whereas in XIV, most new races added come in the form of beast tribes, and since their playability is not a consideration, they design them with cost-saving in mind. To move to the model WoW etc. use, they'd need to adapt how they approach the addition of new races altogether. It's probably too late at this point to do such a thing, since even if the game goes all the way to 8.0, at the very most I'd expect one more race following whatever is added in 5.0.

It's just a shame because it means that new playable races have to be completely new, given their current approach, but there's also no real equivalent to the racial storylines you get in other MMOs, which enable the new races to be seamlessly integrated into the main story (all the way from level 1), so it all feels somewhat disconnected and out of the blue.

I'm in agreement about Tera.

[linay]

Yes, the difference with WoW, GW2 and TES:O is that they explicitly intended for the races to be playable. Whereas in XIV, most new races added come in the form of beast tribes, and since their playability is not a consideration, they design them with cost-saving in mind. To move to the model WoW etc. use, they'd need to adapt how they approach the addition of new races altogether. It's probably too late at this point to do such a thing, since even if the game goes all the way to 8.0, at the very most I'd expect one more race following whatever is added in 5.0.

To be fair, most humans probably can't tell male and female apart for many (if not all) animals. It would make sense that beast tribes would be like that. The idea that a nonhuman (especially beast) race should be familiar enough that humans can tell their sex just seems counterproductive.

It's just a shame because it means that new playable races have to be completely new, given their current approach, but there's also no real equivalent to the racial storylines you get in other MMOs, which enable the new races to be seamlessly integrated into the main story (all the way from level 1), so it all feels somewhat disconnected and out of the blue.

I'm in agreement about Tera.

I prefer FFXIV's approach about being the individual adventurer rather than his or her race.

One bad example of having racial storyline being forced is WoW's current implementation of Allied Race where you somehow have to gain reputation and complete significant portion of their storyline just to unlock the race because of "lore reason" when the race could already be acting as your ally in game even without you unlocking them. This problem is then compounded because WoW doesn't enforce continuity in story between expansions and the fact that a new Allied Race character, while leveling, would then have to deal with story quests that happened before their race supposedly became your ally.