Information on why the devs didn't include Viera Male/Hrothgar Female

[UsagiAndCrepes]

I hope all the excessive color and emphasis added might help someone that didn't find the answer clear enough about their production process. If not, that's fine too I suppose.

It was during Return to Ivalice, around 3 months after 4.0. Viera was confirmed then, and Hrothgar came about at the same time when we were discussing plans with Matsuno-san. We were deciding whether to make a Hrothgar female or a Viera female, and after selecting Viera, work began right away, because otherwise we wouldn't make it in time. As mentioned before, the face parts are special and Hrothgar has big differences between its faces, like a lion face, wolf face, leopard face. It became a fixed model relatively recently. Viera was done right before Paris Fan Fest, and Hrothgar was done recently.

[Remedi]

"We want a beastly race" has actually been a topic of conversation over the past two years. I have participated in those threads. I am pleasantly surprised our voices were heard considering the amount of opposition in the past and now.

Shouldn't be surprised of it.
They were experimenting with beastial race for a while as far HW goes If I remember well. Lupins were a rejected proposal of them, so they were toying with the idea

[Alucard135]

Ahh yes, this arguement. Because the people that design and work on jobs are the same as the people who design and work on races/character modeling and gear.

Thanks for your insight.

I'm surprised no one blamed Eureka for this yet lol.

[Burningskull]

I'm surprised no one blamed Eureka for this yet lol.

That's because everyone knows Eureka is the blame for everything. /joking.

[NessaWyvern]

I hope all the excessive color and emphasis added might help someone that didn't find the answer clear enough about their production process. If not, that's fine too I suppose.

If that someone was me, I was criticizing their production process, and suggesting one that may have worked better.
If it's true that they had a hard NO from the higher-ups until now, then my criticism would be directed towards the higher ups, their short-sightedness cost them much of their good reputation with fans.

Besides, they have a special patch update site right? And there's still several months before release, IF they had male Viera and Female Hrothgar planned, they could have added future Viera/Hrothgar details in there, and postponed showing them, with a note during fanfest that they might come in the future, instead of cutting it out entirely.
They would have a bit more time to work on them then.
They didn't have to squeeze unfinished races into the fanfest, is what I am getting at (the current Viera and Hrothgar have issues relating to gear). They could have showed us their concept work so far in the fanfest, fans would have still been hyped, and more accepting of the situation, rather than the current "NO MALE VIERA, NO FEMALE HROTHGAR, GENDERLOCKS, HELMETS NOT SHOWING AHHH!" Reaction that we are getting at the moment.

It's a fecal storm that could have been handled a loooot better.

[Chained_Icarus]

If they decided this so long ago... why give the vague misleading answer when directly asked in Paris if we'd have male veira? The "hey, we have another fanfest," while not a confirmation, heavily implied there would be a reveal of them in Tokyo.

[NessaWyvern]

If they decided this so long ago... why give the vague misleading answer when directly asked in Paris if we'd have male veira? The "hey, we have another fanfest," while not a confirmation, heavily implied there would be a reveal of them in Tokyo.

Exactly, they've dug themselves so many unnecessary holes. If Viera was done right before Paris fanfest (with them having no males), they should have said so, instead of getting people's hopes up.

[Tramontane]

I honestly want the people who were accusing the devs for excluding the counterparts due to sexism and homophobia to come and explain themselves.

Do you think sexism and homophobia only exist in the world when people blurt out "I am sexist!" or "I am homophobic!" immediately prior to whatever damaging action they are about to undertake?

Wait, let me guess. When the devs took years to remove the genderlock on the bunny suit and said it was because all the men were uncomfortable with working on it, they meant they were uncomfortable with the, um, constraints on resources imposed by SE management.

And when Yoshida said male viera would be "weird" he meant it would take a weirdly large amount of resources to create them.

And when a race locked to female characters caters to straight male fantasies about women, while a race locked to male characters caters to the qualities straight men want to embody, it's all down to an efficient allocation of resources, even though this division is already catered to by existing content (Au Ra).

If the self-justifications of corporate executives were exculpatory of any perceived shortcomings and that's all there is to say about it, we might as well pack up both free markets and democracy. Or one could decide to use a modicum of critical thinking when approaching media and entertainment consumption, not to mention society in general. I prefer the latter.

Like, what do you simps have to say for yourselves?

Irony is dead.

Here's what I have to say for myself: you don't get to say what I perceive as sexist or homophobic. You and the rest of the crowd here and on Reddit who have been engaging in ugly attacks on those who have dared to express their dissatisfaction have no empathy or desire to understand what you're attacking. I can't think of anything more "simp" than that.

[NessaWyvern]

I wouldn't say that Female Viera catered entirely to men, or that Hrothgar also caters entirely to men.
As a woman who plays FF14, I would like to play female Viera, as I like to play as badass beautiful women (when I am not playing as an adorable, evil lalafell).
Hrothgar isn't my thing, but I am sure there are some women out there who like it.

[reivaxe]

why didn't they just say "due to time constraints male viera and female hrothgar will be released at a later date"? why?

Cause they prob don't intend to do it.

What people are over looking is the whole resources thing. Basically think of it like this ...

As things stand, with the current way they do things, they can only do 1 more race. They really wanted the beastly race and even tried tapping into that last time but fell short. So they chose to make the lions.

But instead of making female lions they decided that that time and resources would be better spent on Viera.

When making a race their way currently not only do they have to design them but also do all the animations and what not on top of remodeling all current and future gear to fit them. This wouldn't be much of a problem if they had a normal pipeline for this kinda stuff but they're working in some messy spaghetti code.

So yeah, as it stands these 2 races require the effort of 1 and that's all they can handle with their current work flow. Maybe that will change in the future, maybe not.