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

[Twinsoul]

People keep calling it sexist as if the dev team wouldn't have just made the "bunny boys" have muscular bodies similar to the Male Au Ra and very imposing faces. Even if male viera existed, they'd still follow the same norms as most other male races in the game. They would never just be female vieras with male face features and no t-n-a.

I mean, this is all true and a good point. The choice to exclude male viera entirely is indicative of a deeper culture issue that, yes, would've manifest in other ways had male viera and female hrothgar been included (or hrothgar just left out entirely, not that I'd want that. I like hrothgar despite everything). I'm sure, if that were the case, we'd be having that discussion right now. It's not like this is the very first problematic thing SE has done. Still, it is what it is, and we're in this moment, not that other theoretical one. So this is the conversation we're having.

[Az-man]

/SIGNED

I totally agree, I spent the best part of a week and a half drafting a backstory for my, what i was expect to be, Viera Male... using what little lore was availible. I am so disappointed we've gone back to gender locked races. this exact reason is why i left Black Desert online after playing for only 2 days. Please don't be like BDO, SE.

[Bongaboi]

Perfectly said. This is a backwards decision that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Is this really 2019?

Yes. Yes. Yes.

[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

[Corehealer]

Signing on to this as well, as I have the other threads on this subject. Genderlocking is indefensible, especially when citing lore you control as the developer. Give us Male Viera and Female Hrothgar.

[strawberrycake11]

I still think this OP worded it the best by far.

[Burningskull]

I was trying to figure out why I was so angry at the races only having one gender being playable and why BLU makes me angry until my brain stumbled across the word Incomplete. That is what the new races, and BLU, feel like to me. They feel incomplete. The fact that some of the headgear wont even show on them is even more proof that they are incomplete. Instead of completing one race and going with that we are getting two incomplete races with no promise that they will complete them down the line. BLU feels very much the same. An incomplete job that you can't do anything with once you max it out and learn all the spells. Sure you have the masked carnival but that's mostly a one and done thing.

I think the dev team needs to stop taking on so many different projects and ideas if they are going to run out of time and only release things half way. We didn't need two races. You could have completed one race and done another race in 6.0.

[Zoberraz]

I agree with the sentiments outlined in this thread and lend my voice to it in support.

I have faith you can do better, Development Team of FF14. I hope you are given the resources to do so in a timely manner.

Thank you for hearing us out.

[Lexi]

/signed I would love to have a male bunny and female Hrothgar! Think of all the money they would make on fantasias, level boosts, and story skips. Seems like win/win.

[MoriLeaf]

Please do not speak for all females. Personally I am ok with the new races being what they are. It's sad that a vocal minority are kicking and screaming and will take away dev time to "fix" the races that we were given, to which you would likely complain about our getting lacklustre content because of.