Male Viera as a playable character! show your support

[Arcari]

Here you go:

Thanks a bunch! This is real interesting to look at!

Yeah, I'm gonna agree with Yoshi there; there was an unfair advantage for "mammalian demi-beastmen" since Viera got named drop. Yoshi, you silly man...

Billy: Oh man, I totally remember the OG concept art for Au Ra; they looked so much more menacing (both genders) before they got anime husbando'd/waifu'd in the final product. Ah, what could have been...

[Lauront]

I'm happy with how the males turned out, but I think they could have at least provided the option for some mutations as well as two more draconic looking faces. I'd have tied them to the dragonflights, so my perspective is probably a bit out of tune with SE on that, though.

[Crushnight]

Poll

It most likely wasn't, but they also explained why they went with Hroth - because it added the most to the table as far as varying looks went. Roes were alone in being that big, and no other race, not even Au Ra and Miqo'te, were quite as beastly as Hroths were going to be. Meanwhile Viera are Elezen with bunny ears visually speaking. Regardless of how much I disagree with that (a race is so much more than what they look like), I can understand it.
The problem with that is that likely many people who requested such a thing also wanted the females, especially after what happened with Au Ra, which left many feeling like they were robbed of their fierce demonesses and had to settle for lizard waifus instead. So what happened in this year's Tokyo FanFest is that they not only shattered hopes for male Viera, but also introduced the possibility for female Hroths and then crushed them in the same breath.

This actually makes the addition of Hrothgar more baffling as the 2nd most requested is mixed races and 3rd being more customization for existing races. I think the mixed races is not feasible (excluding Viera&Hrothgar) having to do stuff for every type of combination as i'm sure the devs would think that we would go along the lines of why is this combination playable but not this one etc so they've decided to make mixed races npc only(can fully understand this idea because lets face it we would ask for every single combination).

The more customizing options however has grounds to please a lot more people since feasibly everyone currently playing could get more options for their characters, they could have the same body proportions as the other clans just having 1 part of their body altered this could be like
Hyur: Garlean(very very few can wield magic but it can happen so its possible for WoL garlean)
Elezen: Aymeric options or naturally shorter neck but taller overall elezen
Roedgyn: Goesetsu options
Miqo'te: Hrothgar stuff give them the full bestial treatment
Lalafel: a clan that could be as tall as the smallest female au ra but still go as small as lalafels can go
Au Ra: Demons basically they go full on scale mode only showing flesh at the head and extremities
None of the above would require making new emotes/mount poses nor outfitting as much gear

[Giltherra]

This actually makes the addition of Hrothgar more baffling as the 2nd most requested is mixed races and 3rd being more customization for existing races. I think the mixed races is not feasible (excluding Viera&Hrothgar) having to do stuff for every type of combination as i'm sure the devs would think that we would go along the lines of why is this combination playable but not this one etc so they've decided to make mixed races npc only(can fully understand this idea because lets face it we would ask for every single combination).

The more customizing options however has grounds to please a lot more people since feasibly everyone currently playing could get more options for their characters, they could have the same body proportions as the other clans just having 1 part of their body altered this could be like
Hyur: Garlean(very very few can wield magic but it can happen so its possible for WoL garlean)
Elezen: Aymeric options or naturally shorter neck but taller overall elezen
Roedgyn: Goesetsu options
Miqo'te: Hrothgar stuff give them the full bestial treatment
Lalafel: a clan that could be as tall as the smallest female au ra but still go as small as lalafels can go
Au Ra: Demons basically they go full on scale mode only showing flesh at the head and extremities
None of the above would require making new emotes/mount poses nor outfitting as much gear

we actually have a half breed race in the game npc wise (in the machinist story line , the half hyur / elzen chick). granted shes more like a hyur with pointy ears , technically it would also not require as much work since they have an npc model in place (for the females anyway) =O. Id still like to see the race the seed seers are as playable , but i guess theyre even rarer than males of miqos and vierra are XD , but itd be nice to get something thats an "in between" size between miqo and lala personally , and they fit the bill , we only keep getting tall races lately.....>.< , BBBUUUUUUTTTTTT id still want my male vierra all the same.

[WhiteArchmage]

I believe Yoshi-P even regretted introducing Hilda because it incensed the players asking for playable mixed races. And even then she has a custom head on a midlander body, the amount of work for a customization expansion of that order would be insane...and I'm all for expanding the CC!

[Crushnight]

we actually have a half breed race in the game npc wise (in the machinist story line , the half hyur / elzen chick). granted shes more like a hyur with pointy ears , technically it would also not require as much work since they have an npc model in place (for the females anyway) =O. Id still like to see the race the seed seers are as playable , but i guess theyre even rarer than males of miqos and vierra are XD , but itd be nice to get something thats an "in between" size between miqo and lala personally , and they fit the bill , we only keep getting tall races lately.....>.< , BBBUUUUUUTTTTTT id still want my male vierra all the same.

Thing is that is 1 combination the devs would probably feel pressured to add every combination if they made even 1 playable which is unfeasible to ask of them since their are 15 combinations(this is playable races only) currently(ShB could have 28 combinations of parents) and the unfortunate implications if all were possible to be concieved(lala/roe). This vs 6 new clans where only Hyur clans have different emotes/mount poses is less work compared except maybe lore team

[BillyKaplan]

They will never add racial hybrids because Lala-Roe. They don't need any other reason.

[reivaxe]

I will play devils advocate and say beast races like wolfmen, or possibly Ronso in this case, are not exactly high percentage.

Gonna chime in and say that the poll you posted was from a long long time ago. Yoshi was referring to the fanbase that came after the lupin.

Yoshi: We think that an MMO is a game that people with different perspectives can play it worldwide. Final Fantasy games are games that have beautiful characters, but in the same fashion as in FFX, there are races that look rather stronger. I always use “Guin Saga” as an example. Since we are making a fantasy game, we wanted to give spotlight to that aspect, as well. We thought: “Why add more handsome races… even if we do, the biggest difference will be the ears…”. This time, our motive was the voices of players talking about wanting Lupins which were based on the sketch of a “basic wolfman” and released in 4.0. Also, with the current frequency of patches, we release a lot of data that’s equipment, so for creating one piece of equipment, we would have to use a lot of our resources. With the current resources we have, we could only add only one race. After a lot of deliberating, we decided to add both (beautiful female and Beastman). I think that was our main motive.

As someone who came here often to support Viera in the support thread I did notice that many times people did ask for Lupin or Ronso in their own support threads and often had fights in the Viera support thread with it often digging up the same feeling of "They're just humans with animal ears, give us something Unique like [Insert beastly race]". To which people said no ... the devs would never make a beast headed race playable because of the head gear.

So yeah, AFTER Lupin and the Lupin sketch Lupin and beastly race because popular and second only to Viera. Plus the devs wanted to make a race like the Hrothgar instead of something cute or conventional attractive.

[Roda]

They will never add racial hybrids because Lala-Roe. They don't need any other reason.

But consider:
Elezen + Miqo'te = Viera
Roegadyn + Miqo'te = Ronso
Roegadyn + Lalafell = Hyur
Ambition + overuse of focus groups + disappointment = Au Ra
We already have mixed races \('3')/

On a more serious note: have we gotten any word of words that are to come?

[Lauront]

Gonna chime in and say that the poll you posted was from a long long time ago. Yoshi was referring to the fanbase that came after the lupin.

Yoshi: We think that an MMO is a game that people with different perspectives can play it worldwide. Final Fantasy games are games that have beautiful characters, but in the same fashion as in FFX, there are races that look rather stronger. I always use “Guin Saga” as an example. Since we are making a fantasy game, we wanted to give spotlight to that aspect, as well. We thought: “Why add more handsome races… even if we do, the biggest difference will be the ears…”. This time, our motive was the voices of players talking about wanting Lupins which were based on the sketch of a “basic wolfman” and released in 4.0. Also, with the current frequency of patches, we release a lot of data that’s equipment, so for creating one piece of equipment, we would have to use a lot of our resources. With the current resources we have, we could only add only one race. After a lot of deliberating, we decided to add both (beautiful female and Beastman). I think that was our main motive.

As someone who came here often to support Viera in the support thread I did notice that many times people did ask for Lupin or Ronso in their own support threads and often had fights in the Viera support thread with it often digging up the same feeling of "They're just humans with animal ears, give us something Unique like [Insert beastly race]". To which people said no ... the devs would never make a beast headed race playable because of the head gear.

So yeah, AFTER Lupin and the Lupin sketch Lupin and beastly race because popular and second only to Viera. Plus the devs wanted to make a race like the Hrothgar instead of something cute or conventional attractive.

I've seen little to indicate such an option is popular to the point that it comes second after Viera. Ultimately, the % of active, played characters Hrothgar end up comprising will speak volumes more about this. The devs are taking a slight gamble with it and it may or may not pay off. I still predict, if they add male Viera, they'll prove to be a popular pick like catmen.