Male Viera as a playable character! show your support

[Theodric]

I suspect that no matter what the lore justification happened to be, many within this thread would be picking it apart. I'll concede that it's a little weird by our standards, though I'm of the firm belief that fictional races in a fictional setting do not need to conform to the same norms as humans in the modern day in the real world.

[BillyKaplan]

fictional races in a fictional setting do not need to conform to the same norms as humans in the modern day in the real world.

I mean, that sort of works for Miqo'te. But at the same time those fictional settings do not exist in a vacuum, and it's so easy to take the Hrothgar gender disparities to pretty bad places real quick.
At the very least, it would be nice to feel like some effort was put into it, and not just use the exact same justification to everything they want to genderlock. They're few, and they're loners. Which doesn't even hold water given some of the race-gender combos with that lore are already in the game. And yeah, biologically speaking that would work better if it was talking about the males, if the females are fewer you're going to have to add more to that lore for the race to even continue, let alone avoid horrible implications.

[Lauront]

I suspect that no matter what the lore justification happened to be, many within this thread would be picking it apart. I'll concede that it's a little weird by our standards, though I'm of the firm belief that fictional races in a fictional setting do not need to conform to the same norms as humans in the modern day in the real world.

I'm all for that, but only when devs take a holistic approach and work through the chain of consequences. In this case, I don't believe they have - seems likelier that it was just used as a convenient wrapper to stick onto the Hrothgar gender-lock, to mirror the Viera one. The lore could work if the race had some peculiar features to it, like the females laying a great number of eggs, or something, but by all accounts the Hrothgar do nothing of the sort. Maybe they have worked out the implications but I doubt it.

[strawberrycake11]

Great, we know there's female hrothgar and male viera. The races don't reproduce asexually, they aren't molded into existence from clay by some god or another. So make them playable!

[WhiteArchmage]

I'd like to believe that lore was hastily rewritten after the... feedback to be ambiguous enough to "justify" both the lack of mViera/fHrothgar at launch, and the possibility of adding them in the future. They may have meant for the Hrothgar to be fully male like the Galka and not reproduce as such, more "resurrect"... like the Galka, and were too busy to realize the implications.

Of course, it all conjecture but as I mentioned before, it's flimsy enough to allow the missing genders further down the line, be it in the 5.x cycle (unlikely, but I'd go with 5.4 at the earliest) or 6.0 (however, I wouldn't like them to be locked behind 6.0 purchase, talk about rubbing salt in the wound).

[Wolfyboy]

Well since this has turned into a Hrothgar thread I might as well say my piece. The whole "breeding slave" thing that people are implying can be easily explained away if they simply say they have similar breeding habits as cats. Cats have a pregnancy period of around 2 months and breed on average 4-5 per litter (Lets say 5 for easier math). We know that male Viera are considered rare on a 1-5 ratio, so lets assume female Hrothgar follow the similar pattern.

200 females and 800 males for a total population of 1000. Now if every female gets pregnant with one man and has 5 children then they doubled the population. 200 x 5 = 1000.

The lore that we know of Hrothgar is literally the racial description. Does any of the races description on the character creator have their breeding habits enlisted? Is that the first thing people look for before making a race?

[Quipsy]

It isn't even really about norms, it's just bizarre logically--unless, like some have stated, the big cats reproduce by laying a clutch of eggs or had big litters of twenty or so little, easy-to-birth kitten-sized kittens that grow person-sized relatively quickly. It's just... not viable to have them reproduce any other way. Heck, I wouldn't complain about actually seeing the queen for the time being as a lone female NPC bragging about a particularly big clutch or litter as that's better than the alternative of them constantly giving birth to one or two big babies at a time. It makes you squirm a little, thinking about that. That's a big job to keep up with enough frequency to keep the population stable.

Of course, it smacks of band-aid writing and I'm sure they'll flesh out whatever's going on with something that's not nearly as odd soon enough, but the initial lore is rather puzzling.

"Kitten eggs" has FFXIV x Hatchimals cross promotional potential which is kind of a funny thought

[Wolfyboy]

It isn't even really about norms, it's just bizarre logically--unless, like some have stated, the big cats reproduce by laying a clutch of eggs or had big litters of twenty or so little, easy-to-birth kitten-sized kittens that grow person-sized relatively quickly. It's just... not viable to have them reproduce any other way. Heck, I wouldn't complain about actually seeing the queen for the time being as a lone female NPC bragging about a particularly big clutch or litter as that's better than the alternative of them constantly giving birth to one or two big babies at a time. It makes you squirm a little, thinking about that. That's a big job to keep up with enough frequency to keep the population stable.

Of course, it smacks of band-aid writing and I'm sure they'll flesh out whatever's going on with something that's not nearly as odd soon enough, but the initial lore is rather puzzling.

"Kitten eggs" has FFXIV x Hatchimals cross promotional potential which is kind of a funny thought

It's fine to be curious about something that you don't know about, it isn't fine when people are making breeding slaves canon in their heads about a race they know almost ZERO about. I would never normally post in this thread, as I don't care one way or another if male Viera are added or not, but the things people are implying is down right disgusting.

[Senn]

From what I read, it says male viera are "seldom, if ever, found within the bounds of any village". That doesn't necessarily mean the males number lower in population. It just means they are seldom found. Is there anywhere else that states the males number fewer than the females? Maybe I'm missing it.

As for female hrothgar, maybe they have very long life spans. If that's the case, perhaps it wouldn't be unusual to have many children.

[Rokke]

Of course, it all conjecture but as I mentioned before, it's flimsy enough to allow the missing genders further down the line, be it in the 5.x cycle (unlikely, but I'd go with 5.4 at the earliest) or 6.0 (however, I wouldn't like them to be locked behind 6.0 purchase, talk about rubbing salt in the wound).

The new tidbits would still have to fall in line with what appears in game thats been translated already (how we got the french leaks). I'm actually quite glad its as thin as it is- a more solid defense past "they're just rare" would have been a far larger an issue in petitioning the missing options as it'd involve significant rewrites in addition to the conceptualizing/modeling/animating/testing.

From what I read, it says male viera are "seldom, if ever, found within the bounds of any village". That doesn't necessarily mean the males number lower in population. It just means they are seldom found. Is there anywhere else that states the males number fewer than the females? Maybe I'm missing it.

The only real things we know about them involving numbers is that they're born at a less frequent rate and once they leave their village they are subjected to training that kills a number of them.

I interpreted that bit as it just explaining that outside potentially very rare cases, all males will leave their birth village at one point or another once they come of age. It actually makes me curious about the potential conditions that keep it "seldom, if ever" vs. "never". Like, would a sickly youth be allowed to stay? Or a aged forest master that's been maimed to an extent he can no longer serve the wood?