Yoshi-P considering feedback on the new races

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

When people asked for Viera, it was because we wanted to see how the team would make the males. The original Viera request thread constantly asked for them. We didn't really get both, we got half of both races. The people who'll complain about the lore are those using it as an excuse to not add them already.

Citation Needed. Not calling you wrong, Id just love to see a Quote.
And people who disregard the lore, don't respect the Franchise

[QUOTE=J Nevermind the fact that people did, in fact, specify that they wanted to make Viera females and males. It accompanied pretty much every discussion about Viera.[/QUOTE]
And never mind the fact that there is a lore reason why we never see males.
But hey, I can repeat this fact all day long, and even point out that in the article they mentioned the lore, and everybody will still ignore it.

Technically...they already changed an established lore. In FFXIV Male Viera are said to live in solitary, guarding the woods, they live alone and die alone.... In FFXII/Ivalice They just had their own settlements seperately from the women.

Thats pretty much the same thing, they are out of view never if ever seen. The wording still dictates they are not seen by the outside world.

[Missy-Qih]

I do not believe that there should be gender locking in the game, I would like to see a Male Viera and a Female Hrothgar added to the game, either at launch or as soon as they can after launch.

[LittleChickenNugget]

I think people are being very selfish and thinking their own society and culture is the only one that exists. Not everywhere in the world has the same social views as America and Europe and that's okay. Just like people don't want people to be opposing their views and reasons, why is it okay for those very same people to be so rude to others with differing opinions? In a culture where that particular way of thinking is the norm?

[wereotter]

Female and Male Cat People make more sense then Male Bunny people. Because...
say it with me...
Lore.

Hate it and disagree with it all you want.
But even the dev team recognizes this fact.

Lore can limit the fact, but the dev team makes the lore, so they can make lore as to why they can exist too.... I take it like this. Lore done right is the Miquotes. If you go to Forgotten Springs there are 32 females and 3 males in that settlement, which is accurate to how the race works (I counted this weekend) BUT that scarcity of males doesn't prohibit people from playing them. Duswight elezen are so rare there's only one named NPC of that race in the entire game, and he's a part of the level 1-30 lancer quests (feel free to correct me if anyone knows of any others) Additionally, they rarely leave Gelmorra because of fear of the greenwrath as well as their disputes with the wildwood elezen, but they're still playable.

For an example of how they can rewrite the lore here, perhaps Viera function as we learned in the Return to Ivalice lore, but let's say that part of their territory on The First was swallowed by the flood of light, so the Viis have had to adapt and integrate into the remaining safe places in the world, so male Viis live in the cities alongside their female counterparts. This gives a perfectly legitimate lore reason that you would see them on one shard while not seeing them on another. Or they could just use lore to educate how often people would see NPCs of that race and sex, but not if you as a player can play them.

[MrKimper]

I think people are being very selfish and thinking their own society and culture is the only one that exists. Not everywhere in the world has the same social views as America and Europe and that's okay. Just like people don't want people to be opposing their views and reasons, why is it okay for those very same people to be so rude to others with differing opinions? In a culture where that particular way of thinking is the norm?

I mean, I agree calling the devs homophobic/sexist is a bit much but, genderlocks are just bad on a consumer standpoint. Many MMO's that have genderlocks are f2p not p2p and really this is more of an issue with WHY isn't square enix giving one of it's top selling products the proper financial and developmental support to add in two unique genders with two unique races? there should be less push on the dev team and more push on the higher ups to stop this trend of making it's developers need to be in this constant crunch rush.

It's borderline abusive.

[Selova]

[QUOTE=DamianFatale;4927222]snip./QUOTE]

A fantasy mmorpg does not need to mesh or cater to IRL societal values. It's a fictional fantasy world with magic and monsters, not a replication of real life.

The issue is, the people that feel the need to insert these values and demand that the developers listen to whatever problem they have with the game that doesn't line up with their personal real life values. There isn't any place for this kind of stuff in a fantasy game.

[Sated]

Glad they're listening to feedback, though it's a shame we're going through this again.

It's kind of disappointing to think they didn't anticipate this... I thought they were more in touch with their community?

[LittleChickenNugget]

Glad they're listening to feedback, though it's a shame we're going through this again.

It's kind of disappointing to think they didn't anticipate this... I thought they were more in touch with their community?

I mean if you honestly think for one second they didn't "anticipate" this... They knew what was going to happen and they did it anyways.
That alone says something. No company pulls a move like this and is suddenly surprised people weren't happy with the end result.

[SoulEchelon]

Except that: A) The Final Fantasy worlds are not connected. Changing a race in one does not do anything for the other: See: Moogles, who have not appeared the same in one FF to the next.

Actually, a number of Final Fantasy worlds ARE directly connected. FF7 is connected to FFX in fact. FF Tactics is connected to FF XII as well. Ivalice itself is connected to FFXIV, seeing as we just had 3 raids steeped in Ivalician lore. We even get to fight alongside Ramza and the gang for the final battle. As one who 100%'d FF Tactics back on the PS1, let me tell you - that was one hell of a fangasm. Couple of years back we had an event that connected FFXIII to FFXIV by way of Lightning herself appearing here, and we'll soon be finding ourselves connected to FFXV. Oh, and Garlean technology? FF6. Sorry but either the worlds themselves are the same (FFT+FFXII) or there is something connecting them in a multiverse-like web where races look similar, but may or may not have differing names and societies.

B) Koji's explicitly said that any lore is from the PoV of whoever says it, and NPCs can be wrong. Even the Encyclopedia Eorzea is written "in-character" in case it needs to be retconned later. See: The Acheron/Phlegethon debacle.

....Okay? That gives them an out to change things if needbe. Understandable, and makes sense in an MMO where lore may or may not need to be changed to accommodate current or future events. If you're trying to connect that with them changing the lore for male Viera, then see my last answer to your post.

C) Sakaguchi has no say in the company since he "resigned," Viera were a creation of Matsuno (with Akihiko Yoshida) and he's denied any involvement with this decision. And he wrote the RtI scenario.

Hence why I stated "This is pure speculation".

D) Yoshida said "lore" and later it came out that lore wasn't even in the decision-making process. And the Viera as they exist in XIV could have any other lore. In fact, the one they have could still support males.

I never said lore was part of the decision-making process. I was speaking directly to the person I quoted - explaining the differences between FFXIV's lore and Viera's. If you had read any further, you would've seen that I'm for both races having both genders, which means I'm for their FFXIV lore being changed to accommodate.

[Melichoir]

It's not "bad lore" simply because you say it is. Like, that line itself triggers me, as I'm a writer that has enough lore behind my stories to fill a book shelf. Lore isn't "made up tomfoolery". It's the foundation of a story and its universe. Days, weeks, months, years, decades can be spent on creating the lore of a single world. Your statement is a spit in the face to everyone who has the creativity and determination to create such things, and I'm gonna stop this particular part of my post before I lose restraint get reported.

Pretty much "Im a writer, therefore I know things" snobbery. Get off the high horse. People have opinions, particularly if they think that the reasoning is lacking. Its not a spit in anyone's face.

Ok, lets get to this then:

Anyways, comparing Viera lore to FFXIV's lore is like comparing an elderly person to a child. Viera have been in Final Fantasy's lore for decades, and that race has been in multiple final fantasy games - all of which had no male Viera. The drawings seen of them were purely conceptual. No one actually knows what they look like, as they have never, ever, ever been seen. Not even the developers know what they look like.

This is irrelevant. FFXIV is not Tactics, 11, or any other ff game. The ff games are only vaguely related, and even then its not really by intention (more of a "What if" idea by fans that the devs kinda adopted.) The only point to argue is what the Lore is in FFXIV. And in this case, it is very very minimal. So much so that it is extremely easy to write male viera into the game. There is no crucial story point that says they cant be in the game. No crux of a major plot development.

All of what you stated about FFXIV's lore has been in....FFXIV and nowhere else. Such lore can be easily changed and easily modified. It's not set in stone, it's evolving, and it's directly governed by FFXIV's dev team. Viera however, aren't as simple, and introducing the male version of that race would be far bigger to the overarching narrative that is Final Fantasy than you might seem to think. In fact, I'd go so far as to say they would probably need direct permission from Final Fantasy's creator himself, Hironobu Sakaguchi, to do such a thing. That's speculation of course, but I highly doubt the FFXIV team would be able to implement male viera without a higher up saying they can.

This is an overselling of a point. As I said above, the lore on male viera is minimal, and is not connected to any major plot or world building exercise. A 'call to arms' sub plot would be more than sufficient given what limited lore is available in FFXIV. Any other lore from any other game is irrelevant, unless youre arguing that to know Viera as a race, you needed to play every other game that has them. This is like saying to read this one book, you needed to read 4 other books that are only loosely connected cause it was written by the same author and nothing more.

At the end of the day, these things aren't as simple as people seem to think it is. I'd be more than happy to see male Viera and even happier to see female Hrothgar (especially since those are actually a thing). What they chose to do was to try and make everyone happy with the resources they had. People wanted a beastial race as well as the Viera. Initial clamorings for Viera was NOT for male Viera, but for the female ones. In fact, they had initially wanted just the Hrothgar being the final race, but ended up replacing the female Hrothgar with Viera instead. Whether that choice was a good or bad one is up for debate. Some are fine with it, others obviously aren't. Personally I would have rather had the female Hrothgar, but I'm not going to scream bloody murder about it. Guess that's just me.

Again, the issue is youre overselling this. Its not as hard as youre portraying it. We can all agree that genderlocking is probably not what people want, but lets not defend the devs reasoning with really poorly done lore in the context of ffxiv. We wanna be frank, then lets have the devs say "Just didnt have the time and we thought people would prefer this more." Not a mouthful of "Muh Lore" shenanigans.

*edit: God my post was a mess...