Devs, Stick to your guns or remove Viera all together.

[Liam_Harper]

If fans can't respect the lore then just remove Viera all together

Fair request. Even female Viera only rarely leave their forest. Having ten thousand or so suddenly appear and go adventuring conflicts with the Lore too. So to truly stick to the Lore female Viera must be deleted or limited to 50 per server.

[TaranTatsuuchi]

I think the community would be more understanding if they admitted this. Development takes time and effort and when you have deadlines to meet, some things won't get done. I'm a developer in another industry, we just communicate what we can and can't get done for a deadline and if we intend to add something in future, we'll be transparent to help manage expectations and avoid complaints like "but you didn't add this on this patch, we need that" and when could be coming in the next patch.

It also gives them room to say either:
"If there is enough demand we'll pool resources to make it happen"
or
"We didn't have time, but we will add them in the future."

Instead they've gone with, "we've not done this because of the lore". Which is pretty final.

Actually, I believe I heard in the FanFest mention of time constraints or something when they talked about the locks...

Though, to be fair, I'm only passably good at understanding Japanese.

So since we're gonna be disrespecting the lore just so male Viera can be playable (excluding Hrothgar for now because we don't know what lore reason they have to not be playable yet), can this mean other Beastmen like Kobolds, Vanu Vanu, Amalj'aa, etc can be playable?

I've gone through years of being told that they could not be playable due to lore reasons. Sure, I now have the Hrothgar to look forward to (thank you, SE), but I'm greedy and would like more options.
At least with the Beastmen, we know they exist.

You're in luck!
There's a new Beast tribe coming with shadowbringers...
You can even play as one!

They're called Dwarves!

[Zer0]

Seeker Males are common, Keeper Males however are almost never seen. The lore states that they're so rare that almost nobody outside Keepers have ever seen one. As they're held prisoner and used as sex slaves.

However, that being said, lore still states they exist albeit rare. In the game there is 2 or 3 Keeper males in the entire world for NPC's. The PC is one character, so seeing a lot of PC Keeper males is fine.

The lore states nothing about male Vierras at all. That is the difference as to why it's a poor comparison.

[Anesteria]

If they 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 don't come without a cost.

I don't think people would be so unwilling to pay that price, and IF Square Enix were honest they could frame it like this:

"We're working on fixing the matters presented to us, however it will require some time to properly address this, so please understand that we guarantee these changes will be made, but you'll have to wait."

There, now they have quelled the spirits of those who wanted that to be the case, while also not committing to strenous time constraints.

Nobody asked for BLU. It's cool, it's fun, but nobody asked for it. Neither did anyone asked for Eureka or Diadem, and these two are probably universally hated by the player base.

People were asking for BLU. I'm surprised though that you haven't drawn the parallel between what's happening here and why it would be an alerting trend though.

We've been given the same treatment, people asked for BLU but they NEVER envisioned the "limited job" system we have now to be there. They imagined different implementations but ultimately a FUNCTIONAL job like the rest, because BLU is one of the most malleable jobs at their disposal that didn't have a clear-cut identity/theme other than the one mechanic.

People have been given a half-hearted product.
With genderlocking, being one of those things where Square Enix OFFICIALLY stated they weren't going to introduce in the future.

[Veritas-Ancora]

Oh yeah next time I fly my rathalos or drive a car in FFXIV on my way to a raid with Androids I make sure to wave to every male Miqo'te along the way, because nothing weird to see here. But oh boy male Viera who exist just really few and secluded, no there is no way some could have left the forest and became adventurers because other races are not allowed to have any agency whatsoever.

This is my favorite quote ever. Hold on let me go get Lightning and I'll dress up in my GARO gear with my Dragon Quest minion so we can go and face YorHa. We can fly over with my Yo-Kai Watch mount.

[Fland]

The lore is really important to some of us and it could be immersion breaking.

Could be?
It already is my dude.
*flying away on my garo mount*

[Sclair0]

Not that lore scaricity should matter (White Mages, Red Mages, Summoners... Au Ra off of the steppe, Male Miqote, 1.0 Highlander and Roe lore, not to mention the dozens of lore unfriendly crap) but if you're going by lore it's a pretty bad lore reason

Female Viera: Never leaves the forest because of social and culture pressure by their civilization, despite this some few members leave and as a consequence lose the right to ever live with their people again
Male Viera: Never leaves the forest because of cultural pressure from a civilization they only partake in every couple of years, as a consequence of ending their self imposed exile they'd... be able to live among people. Despite having more to gain and less to lose than their female counterparts they abolsutely never leave.

[Saefinn]

Actually, I believe I heard in the FanFest mention of time constraints or something when they talked about the locks...

Though, to be fair, I'm only passably good at understanding Japanese.

I expect that time restraints are indeed a thing. If what you say is true, then it's even more silly it's put down to "lore".

They could commit to the idea if they have the ability to put resources aside and if the is enough of a demand, then they'll implement it. If ultimately that's what the issue is, then this would be a good way of dealing with the disappointment. Granted people may still not like it, but it should alleviate it, because people can at least recognise that they have to manage their resources and prioritise what they work on and that dev team aren't closed to the idea and are happy to do it.

However, I would be interested in how much of the money that we put into the game goes back into the development budget.

[Nestama]

You're in luck!
There's a new Beast tribe coming with shadowbringers...
You can even play as one!

They're called Dwarves!

That was mean!

[TroySoFab]

Well looks like male viera is in FFXIV. The lore of one game is not the lore of others.