Gender locked race?

[Eoko]

Do I really think that FFXIV will have a gender design contest? No. Do I think they should? Yes. Because clearly they need some feedback and numbers and images are pretty easy to disseminate. However, I do, 100% think that they will release Hrothgals and Viera males. And from every interview that's already come out, it's very clear that resource management was the biggest issue here, along with trying to appease two groups. It's a classic case of wanting to eat their cake and have it too. And if they had double the resources to handle remodeling thousands of gear pieces, they very likely would have handed us two playable races in 5.0. Everything just snowballed into a messy, messy release.

And at the end of the day any company worth their salt is going to take something like a gender design contest and push it in their favor. They are going to pick finalist that suit their needs and vision best, while also allowing enough variety for us to feel like we got a say and made a difference. And they will still change things if they need to. I know a more differentiated design makes armor harder. It's why Garleans are Hyur faces on Elezen bodies, more or less, and why Hrothgar are very, very similar in body to the Roes; because that makes modelling the armor on them exceptionally easier. And I completely understand that is the main reason they did what they did in this instance. They tried to appeal to both requests and didn't have the resources to model thousands of gear pieces on 4 new frames, as well as give us a major new story, content, etc.

I wholeheartedly believe Yoshi P and the development team were trying to give as many people what they wanted as they could, under the restrictions they were under. I still think everything about the result was done wrong. They should have released the Viera with both genders since they really felt they needed to release Viera, and they should have released the Hrothgar in 6.0, or maybe 5.4, whenever the resources were there. I highly doubt there would be even close to as much drama if there had been no bestial race. People may want it, but based on our existing characters, they would not have been surprised not to get it. And sure, the Viera enthusiasts might have had a bit of spit and fire left, but people have been debating that whole can of worms for weeks, and at the end of the day, they already crushed the Miqo'te lore for it, so why not Viera lore too? These Viera are not the Viera of FF12 or Tactics anyway. They are the Viera of Eorzea, of Hydaelyn. But I still think they are going to see the mistakes they made and do something to fix it. And I'll hope that they truly do something to really, really understand what the player base wants with these two races.