Also going to repeat this point: it is irrelevant whether most players care about a race/gender pick. On the margin what matters is whether it will generate enough spending (eg via new or retained subs, mogstation spending etc) to make the cost worthwhile. As long as the race is well designed, it should pass this test.

This applies to all content they add, and is what I mean by a cost-benefit analysis. With good business intelligence it should be easy to generate this figure. Prejudging male Viera to be less popular than a pick with a build similar to the least popular race gender combo in this game is spurious logic. Even if the plan is to design them after elezen, look at how different female Viera are to their elezen counterparts as it is. I expect male Hrothgar will do better than male Roes but suggesting they’d do better than male Viera is simply poorly reasoned guesswork.