Since Lore Suddenly Matters

[guardin]

the race thing i hate. the healers i get. its awesome! we needed more range and healers need more time in the oven.

[dalta]

So, what is this explanatory lore anyways? That Viera reproduce asexually and Hrothgar all leave their women on some other continent / Hrothgar kick their males off their continent after breeding?

im not 100% sure on viera but i think there ARE male viera but they leave there mothers at a young age and go to be silent protectors of there forest
thats something i heard once a year or so ago. another thing was the males and females are split intro tribes and very rarely met up

as for hrothgar there new for the most part and are VARY LOOSELY based on ronso from ff10 wich had both male and female

[QT_Melon]

One of the Hrothgar clans has a horn, and this was a slide from the keynote:


They're Ronso with a slight hunch and more muscle.

No they're just a boring cut and paste body type of Galka 1.0 instead of at least trying to make them more interesting and change the body types by clan. Ronso have different builds that's my point.

I mean you can paint Will Smith Blue and CG in Genie features but it has to be a convincing translation, and that was my point about the Ronso they aren't.

[Daralii]

im not 100% sure on viera but i think there ARE male viera but they leave there mothers at a young age and go to be silent protectors of there forest
thats something i heard once a year or so ago. another thing was the males and females are split intro tribes and very rarely met up

as for hrothgar there new for the most part and are VARY LOOSELY based on ronso from ff10 wich had both male and female

The males only go into the villages periodically(annually?) to mate and pick up any newly found male children. The rest of their time is spent far out in the jungle as guardsmen, either alone or with kits they're training. They otherwise have no contact with the rest of their species.

[KylePearlsand]

The males only go into the villages periodically(annually?) to mate and pick up any newly found male children. The rest of their time is spent far out in the jungle as guardsmen, either alone or with kits they're training. They otherwise have no contact with the rest of their species.

On top of this it seems to be very rare to actually see a male Viera and more so to live to tell the tale. They are probably more likely to rip your dick off, feed it to you and stab you through the heart fifteen times with a spear than approach for friendly conversation. And that's probably putting it lightly.

[XiroGear]

On top of this it seems to be very rare to actually see a male Viera and more so to live to tell the tale. They are probably more likely to rip your dick off, feed it to you and stab you through the heart fifteen times with a spear than approach for friendly conversation. And that's probably putting it lightly.

And I wonder from which account that was taken, who knows, maybe they are more amenable than we know. Maybe we can befriend a few given the right circumstance?

[SannaR]

It was kind of hinted that only female Viera see the males everyone else ends up dead.

The way they handled why no male Viera was just bad. I mean when the answer is wait til jp fan fest and go poke a npc about their lore it just builds up hope and expectations. Then you go and say nope they're not playable because of lore and then give us another race which at the time of the keynote has no lore and basically say you don't get females because of time restraints. Like really those are your reasons? Lore for one even though you handwaved it for male M'qote which have lore just like it and oh well making two new races with both genders and two clans is just so hard and time consuming that we're just going to give you the dudes of the other one.

[SkyEdge1]

"Its more likely you never see a Male Viera, and those that do don't live to tell the tales"
Johnny Depp : No survivors? Then where do all the tales come from I wonder?

Joking aside, it's a little dissatisfying to have gender locks again, as for me it's something that forces players to accept and play something, rather than being given the choice to play something or not.

[Aelysian]

I really hope the developers read this post and reflect on it too, because I really am pouring my heart out on this one guys. So I hope you all bear with me for the first half.

Let me start off with the expression of how disappointed and mad I was upon hearing the news of there being “No Male Viera”. However I will also humbly admit that I was a bit salty when the words came right out of Yoshi's mouth since after months of anticipating the release of the race, and having pre-ordered it in excitement right after the teaser of the bunny females in France.

Despite that, everything about the Shadowbringers expansion is looking great. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love it; the new maps, cosmetics, raids, collaborations, the lore and where it is headed and I get it, it isn't easy work for you guys to have done so much within the span of a year, there was a lot of harsh decision making, great ideas being scrapped and sacrificed for the more practical ones. I really appreciate what you, the team have done to get this far. I, myself, want to have a place as a concept artist/illustrator in the gaming industry and I fully understand that there will always be mixed reviews and how people feel about this game — it isn't entirely perfect — but I believe that's how it's supposed to be, because there is always room and an unlimited time for improvement.

However, please don't just assume we would get over the phases of being in denial, of overcoming our denial and accepting such a change if you think that you are going to get away with it like that, because this is an impression that you, as developers, have left on most of us for the years to come so try to consider how this would affect your sales on future expansions as you reveal them and the overall lifespan of the game. And it's not just the two new races being gender-locked that the player base is upset about, there are other things worth mentioning.

I understand that maybe we all have too high of an expectation. Fair enough that maybe you guys couldn’t see how important it was to us. But now, as you read this, I really hope that you can see how much it would mean to us if you could fulfill our wishes for this game's upcoming expansion.

Anyways, with the release of Shadowbringers just being around the corner and upset fans like me all around, it must be a difficult time right now. And this little dying friend I have called 'hope' is driving me to type this out for your sake, the game, and us.

So before time runs out in these few months before the big update is pushed out, let's get to the main point.

Now why it was mentioned there won't be any male Viera — from what I was told (please correct me if I'm wrong, translations and all that) — was because it was lore-related. That the male Viera as an addition to the game would be awkward(?) for Yoshi, it would make no sense to add them to the game. That, or it was a poor business decision by Square Enix.
And it was here that I questioned that if you guys really tried to do anything about the male Viera's implementation, to put in the extra effort to see how you could inject their existence into the world of Hydaelyn as with all other things that makes FFXIV unique in its own world compared to all the other titles.

Yes, I have a full understanding that the male exist and are inferior to the females because of Viera tradition, that they are extremely rare and that they would be kept for only mating. If they end up being male, they would get kicked out into the forest with the other males to be trained with hunting and surviving. Here is an entire paragraph for the source of information from the Final Fantasy wiki.



What I and you have just read here was a seed that could be a jungle of opportunities for the lore. Heck, this could even be the very first game to reveal the male Viera if you guys tried a little bit harder. If you can write about going to another parallel universe, you can surely pave way for the male Viera to exist, and this counts for the female Hrothgar too. Now that's creative writing.

Additionally, lorewise do note how they were to be described as secretive, vicious, skilled hunters. So there you go people, we aren't just a bunch of soft, sad, willowy bunnies. We're independent badasses. This also means they aren't entirely weak to the females, and that the male Vieras also have a place and purpose in this world.

I mean, the players could make them soft if you wanted to and break the lore for the sake of aesthetics, and that's entirely up to us on how we want to enjoy this game because it's what gives us that unique experience to have a want to keep playing the game. I do also acknowledge that the male and female do not coexist as much as possible, but then again, anything can make sense if you tried hard enough. And don't even get me started on the Male Miqo'te and female Roes.

If it had to do with the coding of the game and the limited capacity for its assets, you could have maybe recycled the bodies of the Au'Ra due to their identical body shapes based on the previous concept designs, you could have released two races with two full genders if you had pushed back the release date for the Hrothgar too, and it would save the time for more optimization. Besides, furthering the development of the Viera instead of two very different races at the same time is clearly not as efficient as developing just one race of both gender, especially when they both have ‘high levels of customization’.

In the end, it would have been better if the male Viera was going to be released. The idea of having one race being gender locked would be awful because it's a bad sign for the future development. It would give you at Square Enix generally a bad reputation in the MMORPG community and it is definitely something that limits the game's enjoyability.

If you inspect my profile, yes, I am a fairly new player, but I am familiar with MMORPGs. And I knew nothing about FFXIV before I had begun to play a few months ago, nor have I heard any previous news about the Viera being gender-locked, but what I do know is that you at Square Enix developed the game we all know and love as FFXIV after its reboot. That you guys had really outdone yourself with 2.0 and how it really catered successfully to the fans. And I’m proud to be a part of the community now, especially with great developers making it happen.

Personally speaking, I really wanted to enjoy my journey in FFXIV playing as a male Viera, and plenty others would want to do that too. It was really difficult and heartbreaking to hear that male Vieras were not going to be added into the game. And it hurts to see that a decent portion of the playerbase does not support us because of how we reacted violently to it, and I apologize on behalf of the angry community, if not, all. I will choose to continue to stay optimistic up to the release of Shadowbringers and any latest news regarding the release of the Male Viera and the Female Hrothgar too.

So, please hear us out and at least give some form of response in light to this recent calamity.

Thank you,
Aelysian c:

P.S. This is what we could have had, something like this?

Art by Kome,
Tumblr : https://sugoi-kome.tumblr.com/
Twitter : https://twitter.com/frischenq

[XiroGear]

Masterfully said Aelysian, We need to keep the pressure on them in a positive/creative way. let's not let up. as long as we keep our voices raised, they will listen.