Male Viera as a playable character! show your support

[Averax]

Eh, well, mostly just comes down to resources and schedule.

At least I'd pref. them to do proper work on those two missing models instead of forcing them to do rushed mid-expansion release.

I'm content to wait if i know for certain they're coming eventually. It's the not knowing and the devs waiting to get a feel for the crowd that makes me impatient, personally.

[Reyko-S]

Well, I want to add my vote on this unjustified gender-lock decision on the Viera and Ronso race.
Ronso had females in the ff10 and 10-2 game, as blitzball players on 10 and one npc at Kimahri's side.
As for the male Viera, one thing is that the lore say they have not been seen and that their duty is to protect their home from trespassers, but it don't have to be all of them, like some few could have considered like abandon their home and start a new life outside of the jungle, as Fran did on ff12.
If been rare, or not been seen at all would be a reason to not been add as a playable race, and in this case a playable gender, then Viera at all should not be able, since aside of Fran, there was no other female Viera that you could see outside The Eruyt Village rather than her on ff12, if i am not mistaken.
But yeah, I think both race should be playable as both gender, so both male characters players and females characters players can enjoy this new expansion as the new race they wish to enjoy play as and as the gender the enjoy to.

[jake200135]

I don't believe that to be true at all actually. All Viera have the same opportunity to leave the wood, the separating factor would be the desire to leave the wood. Males are described as being generally reclusive. They prefer solitude and only fraternize with other Viera of either sex when it is absolutely necessary to do so. Very few males are born as Viera have a heavily skewed gender ratio, and even fewer males survive to adulthood. Through enduring their rite of passage, it becomes even less likely that a male Viera would want to leave the wood and forsake the honor of being truly fit to serve as its protector. The Viera are nothing if not a dutiful race when it comes to the wood and both males and females it experience it in ways that humans could not understand, but a male's connection to the wood is very different from, and arguably stronger than, a female's connection to the wood.

Yes, but are ALL of the Viera dutiful? No one can say with certainty that ALL of the male Vieras will stay and protect the forest. It's an inevitability that some will leave, just as some of the females already do. If we follow your reasoning, then Viera would not have been playable at all. They would be an NPC only race.

Edit 1: To say that all members of a race behave in exactly the same way is simply illogical. I mean no disrespect of course, but the lore simply doesn't add up for excluding male Viera.

Edit 2: Plus, very likely some Viera have a stronger connection to the greenword than other Viera. So its very likely there may be some Viera males who have a weaker connection with the forest and simply have either a desire to leave and/or no desire to stay.

[heathersaur]

I don't support the genderlocking of any playable race. Please let the players decide what they want to play as.

[SoraKazuma]

Please add male Viera!! It's heartbreaking that Viera were genderlocked to female only....a lot of players were hoping and praying for male Viera! Please don't let us down like this!

[Dhanauranji]

Guys, you are being extremely rude and ungrateful towards Square Enix and the team. You guys should be glad they brought classes from previous games. Yoshida added that in Final Fantasy XII, which is where Viera is from, the male Viera do not show themselves in public, so Final Fantasy XIV Online is staying loyal to the lore with only offering a female option. Yoshida explained that the male-only Hrothgar is Square Enix's effort to offer a new male-only race in response to Viera being female-only. This is FFXIV, so yes we have female highlanders etc, but that is because those were the races when the game started unless you guys did not want options to play? First world problems... if you want to play a female Viera, RP as one, or just play one. Vise versa with male Hrothgars, which are actually supposed to be called Ronsos.

If anything, most of the support posts here have been nothing but respectful (albeit I admit there's a handful of morons who can't articulate properly). Also, you can't argue that we have female Highlanders because "those were the races when the game started" since the lore stated Highlanders were exclusively male. They only added the extra genders on said races BECAUSE we voiced how sexist it was to genderlock stuff (and still is, things considering). Genderlocking stuff based on "lore" (specially lore you design and own and which you changed once since it's for a game) is absurd.

[NearEDGE]

Edit 1: To expand on this, the female Viera live comfortable lives within their villages in the forest. The male Viera live lives of hardship trying to survive in the wilderness. Most people when they live a hard life tend to try their utmost to somehow transfer themselves into a more enjoyable and comfortable state of living. Following this train of thought, the male Viera survive on their own near the forest borders to protect the forest. Yes, some of the males may feel honor bound to stay put and protect, but you can be damn sure there are some who are more likely to seek a better life else where and never bother returning. So it really makes no sense to exclude male Viera for lore reasons.

This doesn't sound sensible in universe. Male Viera, more so than female Viera, view the outside world as a threat to the wood. Their specific duty is to protect the wood from the outside world, and they're effectively elite assassins who do nothing but that. I cannot see a male viewing the world outside the wood to be better or of more value than the life they lead inside the wood. And while you're very correct in that females live comfortable lives within the wood, that is the very reason why they wind up leaving the wood: To go on living lives rich with adventure. While their lives are comfortable, they tend to be lacking in fulfillment. Curiosity eventually gets the better of them and when it does they're typically found in dangerous or highly skillful occupations outside the wood.

[Kyuuen]

Genderlocking is like a primal. We beat it down in 2.0 just for the extreme version to come back in 5.0.

This legit made me laugh harder than it should have.

[jake200135]

This doesn't sound sensible in universe. Male Viera, more so than female Viera, view the outside world as a threat to the wood. Their specific duty is to protect the wood from the outside world, and they're effectively elite assassins who do nothing but that. I cannot see a male viewing the world outside the wood to be better or of more value than the life they lead inside the wood. And while you're very correct in that females live comfortable lives within the wood, that is the very reason why they wind up leaving the wood: To go on living lives rich with adventure. While their lives are comfortable, they tend to be lacking in fulfillment. Curiosity eventually gets the better of them and when it does they're typically found in dangerous or highly skillful occupations outside the wood.

But the thing is, no one, not even you, can say that ALL of male Viera view the world that way. Its just as likely that a male Viera would view the world with curiosity and want to explore it just as much as a female Viera would.

[Lacan]

This doesn't sound sensible in universe. Male Viera, more so than female Viera, view the outside world as a threat to the wood. Their specific duty is to protect the wood from the outside world, and they're effectively elite assassins who do nothing but that. I cannot see a male viewing the world outside the wood to be better or of more value than the life they lead inside the wood. And while you're very correct in that females live comfortable lives within the wood, that is the very reason why they wind up leaving the wood: To go on living lives rich with adventure. While their lives are comfortable, they tend to be lacking in fulfillment. Curiosity eventually gets the better of them and when it does they're typically found in dangerous or highly skillful occupations outside the wood.

Male viera aren't a hive mind. It isn't impossible for a few of them to want to leave any more so than it is for female viera to decide to leave. Just making it so there were 0 viera npcs would do enough to maintain their mystery from a lore perspective. Letting the WoL be a viera who left the wood wouldn't be an unthinkable lore violation. I mean, no more so than an Au Ra WoL somehow making it to eorzea before even Yugiri did.