Please be responsible and don't act like children - (my two cents)

[Canadane]

Because its been 6 years and considering how we've been vocal about what we as a community want - which is most certainly not gender-locking, considering the outcry about the bunny outfit, among other things - we thought he'd add the other gender.

Don't lump the entire playerbase as a whole now.
Some people like these kinds of things. It's a fantasy setting, afterall.

[Alacran]

Fair point. However, while this discussion could spill further into a whole discussion about the difference in cultures between the East and West, and also about people's own personal opinions (I'd rather it didn't), it doesn't change the fact that if we make our voices heard in a respectable manner, and present our wishes in respectful way, a compromise may be reached, much like the male bunny outfit compromise was met.

You can defend them as much as you want. It doesn't change the fact that they could have said something after the Female Viera announcement, like it the missing genders would come in time, they wanted to give players more diversity and as such more options in regards to race differences, they wanted to perfect the races missing genders due to their body proportions being extremely different to what we currently had in game, ect...

Instead the hid the truth, remained silent while a great deal of the player base made obvious their expectations, and and cited their own established lore to validate their stance, after they have already thrown out that same lore for other races.

Respect is supposed to be earned, Yoshi P has gone a long way to get that from the community, that's why this stings so much. I expected better from him. He let his bias choose the outcome here and hid it until the final fan fest in Tokyo with no explanation in the face of fan excitement. As i see it he hid the truth until he knew player wouldn't call him out on it while on stage. Blizzard taught many developers something very valuable. Make sure your audience can't/ wont call you out to your face.

[Aramina]

You can defend them as much as you want. It doesn't change the fact that they could have said something after the Female Viera announcement, like it the missing genders would come in time, they wanted to give players more diversity and as such more options in regards to race differences, they wanted to perfect the races missing genders due to their body proportions being extremely different to what we currently had in game, ect...

Instead the hid the truth, remained silent while a great deal of the player base made obvious their expectations, and and cited their own established lore to validate their stance, after they have already thrown out that same lore for other races.

Respect is supposed to be earned, Yoshi P has gone a long way to get that from the community, that's why this stings so much. I expected better from him. He let his bias choose the outcome here and hid it until the final fan fest in Tokyo with no explanation in the face of fan excitement. As i see it he hid the truth until he knew player wouldn't call him out on it while on stage. Blizzard taught many developers something very valuable. Make sure your audience can't/ wont call you out to your face.

This I agree with. It should have been nipped in the bud early.

[Remedi]

Poorly thought to use that gif both for the context and ofc because it is season for it

[LordKoumori]

Of course it would be nice if everyone could do this in a respectable manner. It'd also be nice if everything was made out of chocolate and gooey gumdrops. :v I just don't think it's realistic. That's just how the FF XIV community is. "Great community btw" indeed. I'm just saying that telling people, "how do you think it is sexist/homophobic? It totally isn't sexist/homophobic." isn't going to do anything for anyone. Just adds more fuel to the fire because not only do they feel slighted by SE, but now you've got other community members blanketly dismissing their issues at the same time.

The dev team made this choice, they've got to deal with the fallout from it. I don't feel bad for them in the slightest over it.

Just because something doesn't seem realistic doesn't mean you should strive for it. I believe in people treating everyone fairly and generally just being good people. It might not be realistic but it's what I choose to believe in. And for that reason I think we should encourage people to be respectable about the situation rather that shrugging and saying "some people are like that" and letting them get on with it. Again drawing parallels to my career here, but we don't just ignore children bullying others because some kids are like that. We scold them for it and teach them to be respectful to others. And I'm not dismissing their issues at all, I'm encouraging them to be more respectful about voicing their issues, because the way they're going about it is what's going to nothing for them.

[Ephemiel]

To be fair, it's coming from both sides. While the people upset don't need to be aggressive, those that don't care need not insult others for being disappointed either.

Must be nice living in a bubble. Take a good long look at these forums and the reddit and tell us how people are "insulting others for being disappointed". Almost every attack is coming from YOUR side, calling people and the devs sexists, misogynists and going berserk about not having a 4th healer when Ranged DPS only had 2 choices.

[LordKoumori]

You can defend them as much as you want. It doesn't change the fact that they could have said something after the Female Viera announcement, like it the missing genders would come in time, they wanted to give players more diversity and as such more options in regards to race differences, they wanted to perfect the races missing genders due to their body proportions being extremely different to what we currently had in game, ect...

Instead the hid the truth, remained silent while a great deal of the player base made obvious their expectations, and and cited their own established lore to validate their stance, after they have already thrown out that same lore for other races.

Respect is supposed to be earned, Yoshi P has gone a long way to get that from the community, that's why this stings so much. I expected better from him. He let his bias choose the outcome here and hid it until the final fan fest in Tokyo with no explanation in the face of fan excitement. As i see it he hid the truth until he knew player wouldn't call him out on it while on stage. Blizzard taught many developers something very valuable. Make sure your audience can't/ wont call you out to your face.

Now I have thought about why this was the case for a while, and while I agree, I think they probably should have taken more tact with it, I believe the reason nothing was said was because they genuinely wanted to surprise us with Hrothgar. If they told us there'd be no male Viera from the get go, effectively the mindset of people would have followed the train of thought of "that's not right, they can't just put a female race in... wait a minute... they're not they're putting in a male race as well!"
Sadly two big things kinda went against this, firstly the gaps between the fan fests were too long causing the hype for Male Viera to spiral out of control. Secondly the Hrothgar had been leaked twice, firstly by BLUFever and secondly by the French localisation team. So while I believe their intentions behind the secrecy was good natured, I think that the situation and reality worked against them. So I'd say their fault in this was not apply damage control to the situation and just continuing on with the surprise.

[Leomoon]

I don't see many people saying devs are sexist.
I see people saying that the consistent choices to make hyper-masculine males and ultra-feminine females is sexist.
There's a difference between calling someone sexist, and calling out actions that perpetuate sexist stereotypes.

There have been people on these forums and in twitter called the devs whatever sexist racist bla bla bla.

I had one where they called them everything but I didn't save it. People are trying to plat the identity politics game and brow breat the devs into giving them what they want even going up to demanding vastly different body types for females models. I am sure later down the line we may get the opposing gender of both races but atm we don't, voicing your unhappiness with this is not wrong but demanding a protest like many people on this forum and others on social media are not going to do anything.

[Aramina]

Must be nice living in a bubble. Take a good long look at these forums and the reddit and tell us how people are "insulting others for being disappointed". Almost every attack is coming from YOUR side, calling people and the devs sexists, misogynists and going berserk about not having a 4th healer when Ranged DPS only had 2 choices.

You'll have to tell me about that bubble since you appear to be the one living in it or is somehow calling people that are disappointed, even when they aren't being agressive, babies or accuse them of crying or being salty not insulting? In the real world, it is.

edit: Also, I don't have a side. I am squarely in the middle. I think for and against people are being jerks in some cases.

[Ramesses]

Now as it stands, I'm mildly disappointed with the backlash a vocal part of the community has taken with recent news. Regardless on whether this was something you wanted or not, this kind of response with the name calling is not an attitude acceptable anywhere. I know people are angry, and while I show an issue with this, my disdain is towards the behaviour and not the people.

Tackling the Dancer job first, I understand we were anticipating a healer. Sadly we did not get a healer, however in an interview, Yoshi P stated how of all the job types, healer was the hardest to balance and they'd rather have the DPS and Tank jobs in a more balanced state before throwing a new healer into the mix. So the choice they've made is to focus on a job type which actually has less jobs than healers, in this case Ranged DPS. To take a positive look on this, now Dancer is out of the way, I saw Chemist as a healer job in the future (likely when we go to Garlemard) a very real possibility.

Secondly, the race issue. Now if you paid attention to what Yoshi said before the Hrothgar announcement, they had a lot of meetings about what decision to make. And given the scenario, the two main choices they had were likely this:
- 1 new race with both male and female
- 2 new races, one male and one female
Ultimately they went with the second choice, and, as I believe Yoshi said, was a choice to give players more variety in Beast race. And from that perspective, I can accept that choice. I agree for many that is a choice they wouldn't have picked but that's each to their own, and I would rather have what we have now that nothing at all.

So now comes my gripe with the community. I distinctly don't remember Yoshi or any Dev stating that we weren't gonna get Male Viera or Female Hrothgar in the future. In fact, I would assume given the community's desire for male Viera, having them added in the future was a very real possibility. But this is where my professional opinion comes in as a school teacher. With the absolutely poor attitude that a minority have decided to take, I am now in the mindset that adding male Viera will create a worse issue, and that's giving this vocal minority the belief that being rude gives results. And while I agree that it wouldn't be fair to the people that want male Viera and aren't being self entitled brats to not add them in the future, I believe setting a precedent that being a brat gets results won't be fair on the community or the developers.

So this is me imploring those that are kicking up a fuss and giving our community a bad name, please, rein that anger in. No one wants to empower brattish behaviour, and if you continue to act this way, there's the real chance that we won't get male Viera or female Hrothgar. Give it time, be reasonable in requests and be adult like. Not only are the devs more likely to work towards a suitable middle ground, but you'll also create a better community for us all.

Well said... and "mildly disappointed" doesn't even begin to describe it for me.

I have said it several times in the last 48 hours and I won't tire of underlining this... I am truly fascinated at the lack of simple cognition and critical thought displayed on the forums recently.

Absolutely fascinated.