Male Viera as a playable character! show your support

[Quipsy]

I can understand feeling impatient when it comes to a response, but making more threads about this will probably make things worse--many people don't like the idea of male viera and those who want them for whatever reason, so seeing another thread about them (and the genderlock in general) will just make people cranky. I'm certain that a close eye is being kept on the threads regarding this. The most respectful thing we can do as of now is keep this thread running with our support, ideas, and speculation, to make it known that this is indeed not something that will be brushed off easily.

Sustained interest and input is feedback, however bare. There's going to be some sort of solid answer at some point, though I suspect not anytime soon.

[Alaray]

I'm bored, so I may as well post:

Yeah, I'd like male Viera. Part of it due to not officially seeing one in a FF title and I'm intrigued on that basis, but dunno: just find it interesting sometimes when a more obscure/not so known about aspect of a species comes about. I also have a personal thing about not liking gender restrictions on species, it feels jarring, especially with the prior design philosophy being to add both genders to each. If the game already had a precedence from 2.0 onwards for gender restrictions, I'd care less.

Don't care about the lore implications. We have miqo boys, cars, iphones, a weird ghost thingy from some cartoon or something. At this point, male Viera would fit right in; especially when we're getting a Nier Automata Raid as, legitimately, canonical content anyhow. And it's not like they're not written in, kinda have the same supposed rarity as Moonkeeper men and Duskwights.

And I like playing more effeminate/elegant male species in games (like, tall/slender or more on the slender end of the spectrum than Muscle McGee; with longer hairstyles that don't feel as jarring with the character facial structure). Guess that's personal preference, but I like playing those sorts of characters on the basis that I identify with them a little more, than say, the reverse and I prefer male idle animations a thousand fold over the female ones. (I don't enjoy the "every idle pose but 1 is cutesy" part)

At least it'd be played past a week (you know like the fourth healer, Blu-- oh, wait).

Wouldn't care if we lost whatever other Limited Job they have planned for it.

Wouldn't care if 5.0 Eureka suffered for the inclusion, either.

Last 3 are also more selfish points. (Points of: I don't like that stuff and the longevity of it is basically 0. The pose thing is just opinion, but I stand by it).

Not gonna care too much if they aren't added, but if they were I'd likely play one.

I can live without, but would take it over some of the other stuff SE put in the game. Y'know, personal preferences and such.

Dunno, I like having character customization options in the end.

[Selova]

It would be nice to get a response at any rate. Just a "Yes, we've heard you're feedback and we'll add the missing genders, but we're putting the finishing touches on 5.0 first" or "unfortunately, we're not going to add them at this time," would suffice. Devs, how much money do you want? I'll pay an extra 20 or 30 dollars and I think others would too if it meant funding the personnel to add the missing genders. Not to mention, all the people that will purchase fantasias. Please respond

They've already made a official response, it's just not the response people want to hear. They aren't going to come out and make a official statement saying they are 100% for certain going to add it as of right now.


The community massively overhyped itself about male viera when SE never once made a official statement about them and got upset when they didn't meet the communities overhyped expectation when they announced female only viera.


Now people are expecting SE to make a official statement that pretty much says "We are 100% going to implement male viera on X date" and throw a yet another tantrum about the dev's not listening and not giving feedback just because it's not the feedback the community wants.


People seriously need to relax. They've given their response, you're being heard. So keep giving constructive feedback to them in the consolidated threads and they most likely will listen to the community.

[Beki_Bayaqad]

The lack of response is troubling and gutless on their part. It doesn't take this long to render a decision, which could mean that they've made a decision they know people won't like.

The ray of hope is that maybe instead of that, there is a lot of internal debate going on about what to do, and they've yet to suss out exactly what they're going to do and that's why there is no announcement. If that's so, Yoshi-P needs to hand over some creative control to others, so that it's not just his desires and biases that control the creative direction of the game.

Get out.
No, seriously GET OUT.

They are in the process of finalizing the biggest expansion *to date* in the final fantasy MMO franchise and you're calling them GUTLESS over not immediately responding to some goddamned whiners from north america?

GET OUT.

[Duskane]

Get out.
No, seriously GET OUT.

They are in the process of finalizing the biggest expansion *to date* in the final fantasy MMO franchise and you're calling them GUTLESS over not immediately responding to some goddamned whiners from north america?

GET OUT.

chill

/10char

[Beki_Bayaqad]

chill

/10char

Sorry, I know I made a big thing about apologizing about this very thing, but the poster calling the dev team, who are working their asses off to make two new races work as well as finalizing a whole expansion, gutless just set me off.

[Alleo]

The lack of response is troubling and gutless on their part. It doesn't take this long to render a decision, which could mean that they've made a decision they know people won't like.

The ray of hope is that maybe instead of that, there is a lot of internal debate going on about what to do, and they've yet to suss out exactly what they're going to do and that's why there is no announcement. If that's so, Yoshi-P needs to hand over some creative control to others, so that it's not just his desires and biases that control the creative direction of the game.

I still have a little hope that maybe they will use the backlash to get more funding for the game and thus maybe be able to give us the missing genders earlier. (I mean FF14 is still their cash cow and bad press is never that great)

Also would still be interested in having an answer from the people that say that we already have enough slim male races in the game. What race exactly falls under that? The male cats? Anything other than them and Lalas have muscles thus are not slim and those that want muscular and tall already have three races to choose from (including the new one). And even elezen have muscles.

[Also free log in campaign for the win!]

Get out.
No, seriously GET OUT.

They are in the process of finalizing the biggest expansion *to date* in the final fantasy MMO franchise and you're calling them GUTLESS over not immediately responding to some goddamned whiners from north america?

GET OUT.

They are not an indie company where every single employee works day and night at this thus cant answer us. Heck they dont even need a big answer right now. Just one text, translated for every forum, where they state that they have read our feedback and that they will tell us more about this on day x. This way people at least know that something is coming and when its coming. Saying not a single thing at all, after they went out of their way to wait till JP fanfest to tell us about this (thus after people preordering stuff) does leave a bad taste in some of our mouths.

We are customers! They are a HUGE company. We are not their friends.

[Selova]

snip.

They've already stated what their official response is on it. I highly doubt they are going to say anything more that's concrete anytime soon. I think people also need to realize that just because the community wants something, it does not mean they are obligated to implement what the community wants.

[Lukha]

They've already made a official response, it's just not the response people want to hear. They aren't going to come out and make a official statement saying they are 100% for certain going to add it as of right now.

They actually haven't. They said in an interview that they might look into it if demand seemed high; that doesn't constitute and official response the way an official post on the lodestone would. At minimum, they should make an official statement that they intend to look into it, and give a timeframe for when they will get around to doing so, whether it's today or after the expansion drops (though I don't see why they would need to wait that long to have a community manager read through the forums and other places players congregate and collate the general consensus to present to the people making the decisions).

The community massively overhyped itself about male viera when SE never once made a official statement about them and got upset when they didn't meet the communities overhyped expectation when they announced female only viera.

Actually, a lot of people were really worried when they announced female Viera only and then staunchly refused to make any sort of statement on male Viera, but we got shouted down by people telling us to trust SE, trust Yoshida, FFXIV doesn't do gender-locked races anymore, so of course we're getting male Viera, they're just hyping us up for them...

The hype and backlash being as bad as it is is entirely their own fault; if they'd just come straight out and said 'Male Viera aren't happening, but we've got something else to announce at the JP fanfest instead!', they could have avoided a lot of this. Yes, people would still have been upset about male Viera, but they wouild have gotten the disappointment over with in one go, rather than being disappointed at the EU fanfest, having to wait just long enough for the JP fanfest that people were starting to calm down and have faith again...and then suddenly getting disappointed all over again; and this coupled with the feeling of being jerked around, no less! Instead, it would have been one, definitive disappointment and then all that time between events would have been spent recovering from it, with the added balm of speculation over what the OTHER new race could possibly be.

There was no way genderlocking new races was not going to be a brutal disappointment to a fair portion of the fanbase, but there were definitely ways they could have done it without making people as upset about it as they did.

[Lauront]

They've already made a official response, it's just not the response people want to hear. They aren't going to come out and make a official statement saying they are 100% for certain going to add it as of right now.


The community massively overhyped itself about male viera when SE never once made a official statement about them and got upset when they didn't meet the communities overhyped expectation when they announced female only viera.


Now people are expecting SE to make a official statement that pretty much says "We are 100% going to implement male viera on X date" and throw a yet another tantrum about the dev's not listening and not giving feedback just because it's not the feedback the community wants.


People seriously need to relax. They've given their response, you're being heard. So keep giving constructive feedback to them in the consolidated threads and they most likely will listen to the community.

People keep stating there was no "official" statement about male Viera, whilst forgetting the history of genderlocks in this game. Initially, Miqo'te, Roegadyn and Highlanders were all gender-locked, a decision SE reversed. So there was the rather reasonable assumption that they would not do it again. There was also the FATE 2014 concept art, which featured male Viera in the context of their addition being considered to HW, but being dropped in favour of Au Ra. So it isn't exactly true that they've been upfront about the fact that they'd add gender-locked races, something no one asked for or expected.

There is going to be a lot of disappointment if they're not added, simply because there is not much support for a gender-lock. You may call it "tantrums" but in the end if a consumer does not like something about a product they are well within their rights to communicate their dissatisfaction to the vendor and if nothing happens, consider reducing their expenditure on it or just not buying again. I'm putting aside some of the genuine tantrums people have had over it and just focusing on the fact that gender-locks don't seem particularly popular with this community. I certainly think they're a bad idea.

I'm also not hugely impressed by "lore" rationales for them, when they're on very weak footing.

I agree with your recommendation, though, on waiting for a response and just engaging in constructive discussion until then.

It would be nice to get word before May but I think they will take their time. Honestly speaking the longer it takes, the more I think they are trying to find a gentle way to let people down. They definitely don't want another bad reaction on the level of what happened at the JP fanfest.

Regardless, the way they handled the whole affair left a sour taste and I won't be buying Shadowbringers. Male Viera/Female Hrothgar aren't the only reason for this, but it's a big one. The last bit of faith I had left in SE and YoshiP's team died with that announcement.

I don't necessarily think that's what they're doing, but if they're eager to prioritise working on features of the game like character customisation and the graphics more generally (something they've indicated), which are significant long term investments in the game with great potential payoff (buying the game a few more years of viability), male Viera and female Hrothgar may have to take a backseat for quite a while (into 6.0 probably), so there's an awful lot of stuff to think about and plan logistically. That is something which I think is and should be a higher priority and will even benefit male Viera if they go ahead with it, even if the wait is longer.

It's true that they may double down on their decision but it's certainly not the only reason to not come out with an immediate response.

Yes I say so and like you just said it's my opinion an one that's as valid as yours, also it is certainly a possibility just like it is that we get them at 5.2 5.3 5.4 or 6.0

Unless they're pulling our legs and are hiding male Viera, 5.1 is just an unrealistic timetable.