Male Viera as a playable character! show your support

[Lauront]

Just something about the Raen lore - nothing in it suggests they gave up their martial lifestyle. They are in fact mentioned in the lorebook v2 as being held in high regard for it throughout the Far East. You would not expect a big difference between the two subraces on that basis. All the Raen traded in was the non-stop tribal warfare, because it wasn't conducive to developing a civilisation of any note.

Where SE could have differentiated them is by inserting a reason for the Xaela to be bulkier, and maybe go with some Voidsent-styled mutations, whilst leaving Raen as is, but giving females of both subraces a wider height scale so you can still make the short ones but also take them to Highlander height. Unfortunately, their approach was not particularly creative with respect to the Au Ra.

[Mylionare]

Unique subraces are highly unlikely, if I recall just doing highlander was an immense headache that was again, only finished as a leftover from 1.0 correct?

[Lauront]

They're a headache with their current engine, yes.

[Mylionare]

I'd like for them to fix it but I feel like they have no intention of actually doing much more work on the engine. I don't know if they'd have to upgrade it for HD textures.

[Umeikoai]

They're not going to waste more cash on making another model and then fit the clothes to them.

Thing is they most likely won't make another body model to fit clothes on. There are 3 body models for playable males at least when you look at the game's files and 2 models for playable females. The two for females are just the Lalafell model and the Hyur model which all the female playable races who aren't Lalafell use. All the muscle tone is just a texture change in the material. It is also the same reason female Viera doesn't have special feet because they just use the Hyur body. The three body for males are the Roegadyn one which Hrothgar shares with, Lalafell which is its own thing, and Hyur which Elezen, Miqote, Au Ra, and Highlander all share with. All the game does is scale the bones of the model to make a new body. No new rigging for every single race. As for animations, since most characters share the same bones they could easily just have both male Viera use the same animation set as each other in terms of clans. You can even see some shared animations between male Midlander and Highlander despite them looking drastically different. Most they would do in the case of a male Viera is make new face models and animations but have them use the Hyur body with different bone scaling.

[Gwenorai]

Thing is they most likely won't make another body model to fit clothes on. There are 3 body models for playable males at least when you look at the game's files and 2 models for playable females. The two for females are just the Lalafell model and the Hyur model which all the female playable races use that who aren't Lalafell use. All the muscle tone is just a texture change in the material. It is also the same reason female Viera doesn't have special feet because they just use the Hyur body. The three body for males are the Roegadyn one which Hrothgar shares with, Lalafell which is its own thing, and Hyur which Elezen, Miqote, Au Ra, and Highlander all share with. All the game does is scale the bones of the model to make a new body. No new rigging for every single race. As for animations, since most characters share the same bones they could easily just have both male Viera use the same animation set as each other in terms of clans. You can even see some shared animations between male Midlander and Highlander despite them looking drastically different. Most they would do in the case of a male Viera is make new face models and animations but have them use the Hyur body with different bone scaling.

Yeah, that, which they're more than likely still not going to repeat again. Someone already brought up highlanders, which have the male and females differ from the midlander counterparts. They're already complaining about the extra workload of having the armours moulded to fit whatever edited model they use. The workload is too much for them to continue releasing content at a strict time table - as Yoshida claimed. I believe it's extremely wishful thinking for them to turn around and then make two different edited versions of the said model for mViera - when it's already an established issue. Animations and all that included, yeah... would be nice but it's so very unlikely. :[

I do agree though that the mViera are going to be using an edited hyur model - that was a given when looking at the females.

They'd be better off updating their CC and adding larger height scales and updating their system in hopes that it will streamline it. But hey, it's all wishful thinking at this point - we'd be lucky to get mViera as is.

[Umeikoai]

They'd be better off updating their CC and adding larger height scales and updating their system in hopes that it will streamline it.

I agree, they should update the character creation and at least add the new faces Shadowbringers added to npcs. Most people would get the most of what they want if they let us scale the bones of our character though. Like if we wanted smaller or bigger shoulders. Larger arms or larger legs. Things along those lines. Probably won't ever happen but games like Phantasy Star Online 2 were able to add a butt slider long after launch. So we don't know what Square Enix can or cannot do.

[Lauront]

I'd like for them to fix it but I feel like they have no intention of actually doing much more work on the engine. I don't know if they'd have to upgrade it for HD textures.

They wouldn’t but at the same time it’d make it easier. I do agree that there is little chance of it happening but at the same time it will hold back the game’s potential.

[EmoPanther]

Didn't y'all have this exact same conversation at least 3 times in the last month or two?

[Mylionare]

They wouldn’t but at the same time it’d make it easier. I do agree that there is little chance of it happening but at the same time it will hold back the game’s potential.

I agree, while I understand Yoshida wants the game to have a certain aesthetic with less options for bonkers character creation like something like Aion, I feel a few QoL upgrades to the main code that made things like muscle tone and maybe even muscle girth sliders easier to implement would help in the long run. As unrealistic as it may be to happen.

That being said I'm hoping for some exciting changes once 5.1 drops, fingers crossed.