Gender Locks Have Revealed the Worst in Players.

[Jamein]

My god the forums have turned into an absolute shitshow.

I thought Brexit was the biggest shit show I would watch this week.

I was wrong.

[Gwenorai]

Aye, some people are overreacting - and that's rich seeing as I was one of the ardent speculators. Regardless, some folks are throwing around insults and the likes - as if they're candy which is resulting in those who are opposing resulting in the same way. Both sides of the extreme, some being snide and aggressive - others trolling and feeding on the salt. It's getting pathetic. Just funnel the complaints into one simple thread, be constructive. If people oppose then just block them. If they're horrific and rude - which I've seen on both sides; then report.

I'm not going to say this is sexism, though it raises my brow. I'm not going to say this is bigotry - because all I have is a few dusty quotes from one developer and I don't know their motivations. My only irritation is the excuse used by the lack of the other genders being added in. Male Viera as a result of lore, and female Hrothgar more than likely limited to keep it 'fair'. The lore excuse doesn't sit well with me, not at all. I'd be semi-happy knowing the truth about the reasonings for the lock that wasn't tide into something as flimsy as lore. Lore they could have changed. Lore that they have time and time again ignored/retconned. The original creator already stated that they had no objection to Viera male avatars. Shrug. Come on Yoshida, was there time constraints? Were there issues? Was there an issue regarding resources? What was the problem? While people would still be throwing a fit, some of us would have been placated and would be less rage induced.

Anyway, people need to calm down and be constructive.

[Awful]

Gender-based discrimination. I'll let you google what that's called, and I look forward to you actually answering my questions in return.

No one or SE is discriminating against your gender I don't get where this is coming from you're the issue screaming when people don't agree with you saying "you don't want male Vieras? SEXIST" and it's why I can't agree with any of your posts you've circumvented on this forum. I don't care if you wear a dress and I'm sure a ton of people don't but because the game doesn't let you wear a certain dress you immediately go to hate speech, get over yourself it's not even close to gender discrimination, it's just a design choice that they haven't bothered changing much like the male bunny suit you could constructively try and petition instead of yelling everyone's a bigot.

The reasons we don't have male Viera are due to sexist views of how men and women should be portrayed. The lore reason is an in-game excuse to maintain these kind of sexist ideologies that have long been prevalent in society. Hypermasculine men and hyperfeminine ladies has been the theme of consecutive race releases since launch.

That again is just wrong if you wanna be a feminine male you have the tools there to make yourself stand out as such, you want to play a muscular female or more of a tomboy the tools are there as well there's no sexist views being brought in here at all the players chose themselves, how to portray their characters you can't speak for society. The more you bring this into FFXIV the more it shows that you have no feedback just whining about how things aren't equal, your arguments that fall flat because I leave my sexual fetishes at the door when I play an MMO.

[TarynH]

"Since it seems like Viera is popular around the world we have been proactively looking into this, but since having a rabbit male might be kind of weird, maybe we’ll look into having a separate race for the male counterpart."

The word "weird" there could mean many things.

weird
/wird/Submit
adjective
1.
suggesting something supernatural; uncanny.

un·can·ny
/ˌənˈkanē/Submit
adjective
strange or mysterious, especially in an unsettling way.

In context, he (Yoshida?) is speaking about a race that in all iterations of Final Fantasy where Viera exist, has been the same lore. They have a female-run society that live in tree tops. Their men live down below and protect the forest/jungle grounds. Their men stay hidden from view for this very reason. And every once in awhile, the men come up to mate. Then they go back down. Sometimes the women leave the forest/jungle and live in cities. Nowhere does it say the males do this.

FFXIV expounded a bit on this:
"Male Viera return to the village to collect the male children who reach puberty to teach them the ways of the hunt. They live in separate settlements and only communicate with the females when needing to mate, trade or collect the male adolescences. The male Viera are secretive, vicious, skilled hunters and are so well adapted to living in Viera forests no one aside from female Viera has ever seen one."

So given those facts, we have to look at his statement again. People want Viera, and the devs/company are looking(looked) into it. However, having males of that race might be weird, strange, mysterious, perhaps even baffling to add in their minds. Why? Because every single piece of lore from other games and FFXIV have stated how rare they are to even be seen. It could have been a company head that made the decision.

I take this as him expressing their dilemma from a development standpoint. I do not consider this to be calling the concept of male rabbits weird. Why even mention them in lore at all if it's the "wrong" kind of weird(taboo)?

I don't think SE, or Yoshida is fundamentally opposed to male rabbits, cats, pigeons, sloths, potatoes, or whatever. I think he was expressing the difficult decision they had to make, and even offered a possible solution at that time to counteract it.

Simply put, they tried to do a good/nice thing to add Viera in the first place. For reasons that we might not even know about, they added them as female only. So they offered another good/nice thing by adding another requested race to compensate. But they had to sacrifice the females of that race. They didn't have to add either. The game still would've been fine without them, or even having them as beast tribes. It would have played the same irregardless.

They could have spent that time making a healer job. (Another group that is upset, and has far more reason to be.) Or they could have spent it on a plethora of the many complaints people have registered against the game. Instead, they made a wager and created two races they hoped the players would enjoy. Maybe they'll add their counterparts later. They might not make another race, but they didn't completely rule out genders.

It's a shame that people would rather quit over this, than give the expansion a chance. Or support the company that worked on the other 95% of the content coming. Or stick with them, to see if they can help change it. But at the same time, it is their prerogative. Realistically, you do nothing to fix the issue that way. They'll probably gain way more subs than the ones leaving over this issue. And your voices will be gone from the crowd.

[Nyvara]

I've read a lot of the ideas and responses about this issue on the NA general forums and the Japanese forums (being Japanese myself, though there is hardly anything at all on the JPN side). You need to remember that Japan isn't nearly as progressive about gender and such politically, socially, or legally as much of the Western world is. Calling Matsuno an idiot and saying he should be fired in a public forum also does very little for your cause. People need to realize that whilst they may live in one part of the world, not everyone or every country has the same ideas as to what is considered 'idiotic' or prejudiced. Look at the current laws in Japan in regards to gender, and you'd see how very far, regrettably, they are. However, that is no excuse for what amounts to attacking others who produce a game you claim to enjoy.

I want to give this 100 more likes!

[Varathael]

Frankly, I will admit to my disappointment in there being no male Viera, but also no female Hrothgar. I wasn't planning on using a Fantasia on my main, but I am admittedly an altoholic. I've been writing things of character ideas, seeing how they'd play out, histories, and so on. Characters of varying races and genders; Miqo'te, Elezen, Lalafell, Roegadyn, Midlander and Highlander Hyur, as well as Au Ra. I have the upgraded sub plan that costs more, for more character slots, to reflect this.

For me, this does impact my enjoyment of the game somewhat as I had been thinking of making a male Viera as an alt. When they showed Hrothgar my thoughts immediately went to "hey, Ronso, cool, I hadn't thought of that. Female Ronso could be cool character idea too."

And then the initial models were shown and I... wasn't too impressed by how they looked. Granted, there are still three months between now and Shadowbringers release, so it is very possible they'll be refined and look better. For me, I wouldn't mind another female character that's more robust; I have a female Roegadyn AST as an alt, after all.

While I still expect I'll enjoy the majority of Shadowbringers' content, I am disappointed by the lack of a new healer for the second expansion in a row, especially when their reasoning is the exact same reasoning they gave for why there was no healer in Stormblood. However, given the current state of healers, it's also understandable; WHM feels like it has less identity and draw to it compared to SCH and AST, in large part due to losing several things that were principally WHM's.

For someone who likes to create, the gender lock feels... off, as I have these ideas that I can't realize now in terms of visuals. For those who are pleased with the stuff shown at the keynote, great! What I ask is that the disappointment is also understood and not made light of. Conversely, I ask those who are disappointed to not lash out at those who are happy, and most certainly don't lash out at the game developers. It solves nothing.

[Anesteria]

The people saying it's "sexist" or "misogyny/misandry" not only are offering a poor excuse, but they're also the minority.
The rest of the people are upset at Square Enix for not being consistent yet again, or because they didn't add something they liked and were expectant about because of a previous OFFICIAL statement.

However, there are people who are conflating the two and attempting to discredit those who are complaining by dismissing them for being "toxic" or because the criticism is "persistent". This group is the one that does not have a leg to stand on, as they are being dishonest wilfully.

If however it is a result of ignorance such as those calling others a "disgrace" for something that they are not doing (blackmail) then:

NEWSFLASH: That's what boycotting, hence protesting against a decision means. It's meant to be insistent and it's meant to hurt the company by simply not supporting it. If anyone actually knew what a protest is, they would know that this is nothing more than par for the course. IF ANYTHING, this is way more peaceful than even non-violent protests happening IRL. If anyone has been to those, they would know what the atmosphere would be like. (Spoiler: much more threatening than anything written on the internet)
Hence, shush, and surrender to the evidence.

Those who are actually being toxic openly insulting others by using profanities and FALSE accusations, discredit themselves.

[cicatriz313]

The people saying it's "sexist" or "misogyny/misandry" not only are offering a poor excuse, but they're also the minority.
The rest of the people are upset at Square Enix for not being consistent yet again, or because they didn't add something they liked and were expectant about because of a previous OFFICIAL statement.

However, there are people who are conflating the two and attempting to discredit those who are complaining by dismissing them for being "toxic" or because the criticism is "persistent". This group is the one that does not have a leg to stand on, as they are being dishonest wilfully.

If however it is a result of ignorance such as those calling others a "disgrace" for something that they are not doing (blackmail) then:

NEWSFLASH: That's what boycotting, hence protesting against a decision means. It's meant to be insistent and it's meant to hurt the company by simply not supporting it. If anyone actually knew what a protest is, they would know that this is nothing more than par for the course. IF ANYTHING, this is way more peaceful than even non-violent protests happening IRL. If anyone has been to those, they would know what the atmosphere would be like. (Spoiler: much more threatening than anything written on the internet)
Hence, shush, and surrender to the evidence.

Those who are actually being toxic openly insulting others by using profanities and FALSE accusations, discredit themselves.

I mean, did you even read OP's post? Like put your defense in any of the 30 other posts, this dude is off the rails.

[Anesteria]

I mean, did you even read OP's post? Like put your defense in any of the 30 other posts, this dude is off the rails.

I did. But I also read what the others posted and guess what.

It's not a defense, it's a clarification. But people come here in earnest and keep falling on the sword of Damocles.
By using the same arguments and tone.

[Deceptus]

I've read a lot of the ideas and responses about this issue on the NA general forums and the Japanese forums (being Japanese myself, though there is hardly anything at all on the JPN side). You need to remember that Japan isn't nearly as progressive about gender and such politically, socially, or legally as much of the Western world is. Calling Matsuno an idiot and saying he should be fired in a public forum also does very little for your cause. People need to realize that whilst they may live in one part of the world, not everyone or every country has the same ideas as to what is considered 'idiotic' or prejudiced. Look at the current laws in Japan in regards to gender, and you'd see how very far, regrettably, they are. However, that is no excuse for what amounts to attacking others who produce a game you claim to enjoy.

SquareEnix needs to realize they are running a global game and that players in other countries have different standards than they do. Some hold dearly to those standards.