Female Hrothgar as a playable race. Show your support!

[Tsumdere]

Eh..I think the dev team missed the mark, cause the first critiques of Hrothgar were quite literally "Its just furry Roe men."

From the player perspective, the comment about Viera males being just elezen with bunny ears is no different from the fact that Hrothgar come across as Roes with furry heads. Granted, its more distinct, but the same line of thinking is at play. I think the devs, broadly, really missed the mark on what they think people would want. If anything, if they really wanted Hrothgar, they shouldve just gone all in on them. They wouldve been received way better if there was no viera female, but since they did to viera, it drastically changed peoples expectations. It really was misreading the player base at that point.

I hate this line of reasoning by SE too because then we get into the argument of why male characters were deserving of diversity, but females aren't and have to stay sexpots. I agree that if they had just given us a complete Hrothgar race, there wouldn't have been much backlash.

Give me Hrothgar ladies!

[Roda]

I hate this line of reasoning by SE too because then we get into the argument of why male characters were deserving of diversity, but females aren't and have to stay sexpots. I agree that if they had just given us a complete Hrothgar race, there wouldn't have been much backlash.

Give me Hrothgar ladies!

I've said it before and I'll say it until this mess is solved, they should've finished hrothgar and made viera a beast tribe to then be revealed as playable in 6.0

[Melichoir]

I've said it before and I'll say it until this mess is solved, they should've finished hrothgar and made viera a beast tribe to then be revealed as playable in 6.0

This would be unorthodox but probably wouldve worked out well long term. Youd get the immediate knee jerk reaction of "Why ddi you create Hrothgar if you have Viera right here!?" and chalked it up as a FU slap in the face to the player base, but this would buy them some time. I think splitting it was probably the worse course of action.

[Roda]

This would be unorthodox but probably wouldve worked out well long term. Youd get the immediate knee jerk reaction of "Why ddi you create Hrothgar if you have Viera right here!?" and chalked it up as a FU slap in the face to the player base, but this would buy them some time. I think splitting it was probably the worse course of action.

See they could just di the teasing they so love to do with "oh they're very wary of outsiders we'd need to gain their trust before they allied with other races~" Boom, stalling achieved without saying yes or no.

[Iscah]

They'd still have to build more than two character models in that case, and the "have to earn the tribe's trust before they'll come out of isolation" thing only really holds up until Viera become playable and are suddenly everywhere.

[MrKimper]

Eh..I think the dev team missed the mark, cause the first critiques of Hrothgar were quite literally "Its just furry Roe men."

From the player perspective, the comment about Viera males being just elezen with bunny ears is no different from the fact that Hrothgar come across as Roes with furry heads. Granted, its more distinct, but the same line of thinking is at play. I think the devs, broadly, really missed the mark on what they think people would want. If anything, if they really wanted Hrothgar, they shouldve just gone all in on them. They wouldve been received way better if there was no viera female, but since they did to viera, it drastically changed peoples expectations. It really was misreading the player base at that point.

I think the dev team just really had a hard on for implementing a furry race but the viera concept was way too difficult to implement. Again they could have just not showed the viera concept art at all during the HW au ra panel, even more they could have left the males out as well if they weren't going to be implemented.

[Roda]

They'd still have to build more than two character models in that case, and the "have to earn the tribe's trust before they'll come out of isolation" thing only really holds up until Viera become playable and are suddenly everywhere.

Something something, yugiri hiding her face in front of an au ra wol.

And I hold little concern for the "fastest growing mmorpg" having to devote more resources to adding features to their cashcow game. Especially since at the moment they're spending those resources on limited jobs and eureka.

[MrKimper]

No, it doesn't "prettymuch" say that the Viera were rejected for being too similar to Elezen - certainly not to the extent that you can summarise is as him stating that. You can assume it's what he meant, but it's not what he actually said, and shouldn't be relayed as if he did say it.

For Viera to be rejected, they first had to be considering which one to put in - but, by the official line at least, they were never even in the running.

I think you might want to read it closer, but I can break it down for you.

"If we did create a male design for the Viera, he would be quite elegant, handsome, and slim. He would look more like the Elezen race, but with bunny ears."

"What we were missing from the lineup of playable races was someone who looked more powerful and laser-focused on battle, while looking quite fierce. Implementing that kind of race, the dev team could bring more kinds of enrichment to this type of fantasy game. To fulfill player feedback as well as the dev team, we put the two races together."

If they did create male viera it would be too similar to male elezen, they wanted something more powerful and laser focused on battle, but wanted to meet player feedback for a beastial race no matter how small it was. This isn't me cheery picking that is what the just of the conversation is and a look into one of the reasons as to why they chose hrothgar over Male Viera.

[Taybat]

Honestly I don't understand why we even have gender locked races. Especially after male miquote and female roe were added.

[Nestama]

Honestly I don't understand why we even have gender locked races. Especially after male miquote and female roe were added.

This is why.

We wanted to give players options and freedom to choose more races. We envisioned adding a new race, but people really wanted the Viera to play in-game. So if we add another new race that isn’t Viera, people might wonder why we didn’t do Viera, so we had to add them for sure.

We did consider Male Viera instead of adding an extra race, but we tried to take player feedback on adding a more beast like race as well as the strong desire to receive Viera.

Source

They wanted to make two groups happy, even if it made half of those two groups unhappy (which they expected). They couldn't work on the opposite genders as they wouldn't have time to work on them. I feel they probably won't start working on the opposite genders until either 5.1 or 6.1.