A letter to the Devs, Producers, and whoever else has a say

[Veritas-Ancora]

/signed

This is, at its core, sexism.
A few vocal counter-points are claiming homophobia. Let's put that to rest. It's not.
I run XIV's largest LGBTQ guild of 3,000+ people. Trust me, it's not homophobia so please put that to rest.

It's saying males have to be masculine beastly hairy characters.
It's saying females have to be revealing, seductive, large boobs, and heels.

What's problematic is that we had this issue once where Roegadyns could not be women and Miqote couldn't be men. And Yoshi P changed all of that for the good. And it was a victory in MMO gaming.

Sexism is forcing every person to adhere to gender stereotypes. I think we have to realize this mistake was done once and fixed.
Blaming homophobia is in of itself homophobic for thinking this has anything to do with who you love.

These devs are not homophobic. That picture is of me after Yoshi P told me he watched our guild's pride parades with the developers and told me how proud he was of our community. Not homophobic. At all. I was in uncontrollable tears after talking to that man saying how proud he was of us. I will defend that man to the death on this issue.

But this does raise serious concerns about gender images, and I think that deserves some kind and thoughtful consideration.

/signed for the boys who want Viera
/signed for the girls who want Hrothgar

[Senn]

...

Since you're an fc leader, I'd really appreciate if you could spread this link around in your fc for those who want male viera
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...w-your-support
every like counts

[Twinsoul]

/signed. Because I already voiced support here but didn't actually do the /sign thing and I want to. If SE sees one thread about this issue, it should be this one.

Tbh, not enough people talk about the damaging effect of these hyper-masculine stereotypes. We're all focused on the absence of male Viera, and for good reason, but it's worth noting that there's a very strong statement about masculinity implicit in this creative decision. And it's not a positive statement for a lot of us.

If the Devs decide to implement male/female Viera and Hrothgar, we're going to lose out on future content due to time constraints. I guarantee it! These requests/demands don't come without a cost! Damn fools...

I would be willing to sacrifice some content if it meant getting male viera and female hrothgar. Though, tbh, I don't think we'd sacrifice as much as you imagine. They can develop more than one thing at a time.

[KaijinRhada]

+1 for a concise and constructive OP. It's replies like these, where there is an even temper, that we need.

Reiterating my support for male Viera and female Hrothgar. More choices in aesthetics means more sparkly eyes from me! \o/

[Korihu]

Adding my point in, with what I wrote in another thread.

Someone sat down, drew girls with bunny ears in lingerie and heels, then decided only females of these people are seen. Hmm. I wonder why.
Hrothgar would have been a welcome addition, but not at the cost of Viera and Hrothgar being only single gendered.
I would personally have loved female Hrothgar, tough, bestial females are not represented enough. I love the Charr in GW2 for this reason. But instead we're going into the exact same stereotypes things have been going down for years in these kinds of games. Cute, sexy women and fierce, buff men.

I remember being so happy when I first played FFXIV because it seemed like they were breaking out of those stereotypes, giving us catboys and female roes, stupid subligars for both genders. I was like oh my gosh, they remembered girls (and feminine boys) with these kinds of interests exists.
I know some of you may not have this experience, but it's something to grow up and all the media is nothing but skimpy, sexy women. While any of our interests in males is shot down as gross, weird (as yoshi said), and a joke/silly. And god forbid we dared express our distaste, we'll get called whiny and entitled. Yeah, we might be feeling a little bit entitled, having you know, been shamed and not allowed our interests in mainstream media.
And why, tell me, would they go SO far out of the way to suddenly implement gender locked races again, something they decided to do without from 1.0/FF11, specifically because of Viera?
They realised that the 12 developer spent so much time justifying why these warriors go out in heels and lingerie that the males would have to be the same. I would guess they personally found it uncomfortable or 'weird', and thus decided it would be better to be scrapped rather than thinking about, you know, other people.



Then there's the garbage arguement about ''''lore''''. The whole thing about us being adventurers is that we left our society to explore the world, otherwise Xaela should never leave the steppes, sun cats never leaving their 'pride', moon male cats just not existing essentially.
drives away in Yo-Kai Mount, fully equipped in Garo gear while I queue for Nier raid

[AxlStream]

Man... this is pretty desperate of an issue. Imagine if this much support was being MCH or DRK. Maybe they'd actually get played more and wouldn't be a broken mess. Out of all the fights to pick, character's genders is the one a GAME community picks instead of actual important parts of the GAME they claim to play.

[Korihu]

Man... this is pretty desperate of an issue. Imagine if this much support was being MCH or DRK. Maybe they'd actually get played more and wouldn't be a broken mess. Out of all the fights to pick, character's genders is the one a GAME community picks instead of actual important parts of the GAME they claim to play.

I would argue the character in the game they play is an important part of it too. So many people talk about Glamour being end game, so customisation is clearly important to a lot of people.

[Twinsoul]

Man... this is pretty desperate of an issue. Imagine if this much support was being MCH or DRK. Maybe they'd actually get played more and wouldn't be a broken mess. Out of all the fights to pick, character's genders is the one a GAME community picks instead of actual important parts of the GAME they claim to play.

You can't tell other people what values to have. Aesthetic is the main appeal of this game for a lot of people. Yes, even more than the game itself.

[wereotter]

Why are you disregarding what Yoshi-P said about male viera in the keynote.

Male viera do NOT come out of the forest. Making males playable would go against the Viera lore.

Hey.... remember the Duskwight Elezen? Their lore is they don't leave the underground chambers of Gelmorra.... and they absolutely despise civilization and cities. So having them seen above ground in a city state is also a massive lore break, but.... here we are. All of their lore excuses have counterpart reasons why the reason is invalid in the game already.

[LunaP]

I'm actually okay with the decision. It's not the first game I've played that has gender-specific races. I've never branded these games as backwards, they all had their reasons or whatever you call it. My main concerns lie in the playability of the game with the new level cap and the re-arrangement of skills, fixing existing jobs and seeing how the new ones adapt to the meta.

This basically, Yoshi even went into a large explanation as to why there wouldn't be a male vierra due to them being in hiding based on their Lore. It was never a sudden decision to gender lock since Vierra weren't even promised to begin with. Given that they made the Male Hrothgar race (albeit a quick jab at roe w/ some additional features it seems ) but at least they covered the reasoning and lore explanations for a while behind it , so it wasn't an actual "we're just gonna gender lock it"

My suggestion if people want to refute it, change the petition to "please rewrite the lore to include male vierra" and yes people are going to argue it based on other stuff but again depict it as that vs assume it just spreads misinformation because people WILL bandwagon off it cuz someone said it so it must be true.

I wish people would stop w/ the SE bully's gays and hates the LGBT Community attacks though, I get people are angry but god damn.