Male Viera as a playable character! show your support

[RightfulKing]

At the same time, Square Enix is being kind of iffy about responding to player feedback and keeping their word on this particular subject... They promised to not include sex-segregated races again, and yet here we are. Now, I don't mind waiting if it means we get more customization options for the viera and hrothgar we already have, but I'd like Square to actually be transparent about it. A large portion of the community doesn't seem to enjoy sex-segregated races and I hope they can at least acknowledge that.

[zeylos]

At the same time, Square Enix is being kind of iffy about responding to player feedback and keeping their word on this particular subject... They promised to not include sex-segregated races again, and yet here we are. Now, I don't mind waiting if it means we get more customization options for the viera and hrothgar we already have, but I'd like Square to actually be transparent about it. A large portion of the community doesn't seem to enjoy sex-segregated races and I hope they can at least acknowledge that.

SE hasnt ever been good with taking feedbakc in and using it ASAP, but at least it isnt like EA

[zeylos]

They said in live, that will add them, but not asap , so why this whole debate or suport, they said Yes in time, not now

They didnt exactly confirm it, theyve just been teasing it and its very very likely, but I mean, stranger things have happened than not to add the missing genders I guess

[Sei_Konsetsu]

At no point did SE promise to not do "sex segregated races" nor was it ever implied that way. I keep seeing this a lot, but no one can show any artical or media confirming this statement. I have nothing against adding male viera, but people should usr facts, not assumption in their argument against why SE didnt impliment male viera.

[reivaxe]

At no point did SE promise to not do "sex segregated races" nor was it ever implied that way. I keep seeing this a lot, but no one can show any artical or media confirming this statement. I have nothing against adding male viera, but people should usr facts, not assumption in their argument against why SE didnt impliment male viera.

Yeeeeah, I've pointed it out a few times. It's one of those non-sense things people take as fact because others say it enuff yet no one has any cites for it.

We legit know that Yoshi, after giving us Female Roe- Female Highlanders- Male cats, said "They'd look weird. If we ever did Viera we'd have to give something different for the males."
That was in 2013. Doesn't sound like the words of a man who was openly saying "no-more-mono-gender-races ...EVER!".

[zeylos]

At no point did SE promise to not do "sex segregated races" nor was it ever implied that way. I keep seeing this a lot, but no one can show any artical or media confirming this statement. I have nothing against adding male viera, but people should usr facts, not assumption in their argument against why SE didnt impliment male viera.

after they added male miqote and female roegadyn they did say that they heavily dislike the idea of genderlocked races and were against it hence why they removed it

[dinnertime]

At no point did SE promise to not do "sex segregated races" nor was it ever implied that way. I keep seeing this a lot, but no one can show any artical or media confirming this statement. I have nothing against adding male viera, but people should usr facts, not assumption in their argument against why SE didnt impliment male viera.

The playerbase has a tendency to think anything the devs say becomes a 'promise' when it's mostly not. You'll see the word 'promise' every time someone complains about a piece of content that they thought to do or at least plan to do, that didn't get fulfilled yet.

[Melichoir]

At no point did SE promise to not do "sex segregated races" nor was it ever implied that way. I keep seeing this a lot, but no one can show any artical or media confirming this statement. I have nothing against adding male viera, but people should usr facts, not assumption in their argument against why SE didnt impliment male viera.

So the issue is nuanced. For starters, YoshiP has commented on this. According to him, he wanted to complete the 1.0 races by adding their counterpart. Ive heard in other discussions a good part of this was due to player feedback. As a result, there was a precedent set by both devs and players that races would have both sexes. This is somewhat backed up by Yoshi P in various interviews, such as with Mr. Happy. It is implied in that interview that Viera came first and were considering Male Viera but opted for a more beastial race like the Ronso/Hrothgar due to a few factors - two namely being Lore on Viera and the complications of how theyll look (as in they need to look unique which is a semi important concern though you could argue Hrothgar are just fuzzy Roes), and the demand for a non cutesy beastly race. People wanted a savage race, as well as viera, and they felt they couldnt deliver both with Viera alone without running into roadblocks.

Personal aside here, I think the nonsensical push back on AuRa being dimorphic is or was a big part of this problem. So many people complained about them being so different. I think it wouldve been possible to have both a beastly race and Viera by having Male Viera be more akin to Hrothgar in appearance (hulking beastly rabbit people) but people would throw a fit much like what happened with AuRa. Hell, they couldve made Viera females more beastly too and possibly making them similar but unique to the predecessors, but Im guessing people would snap their keyboards in fits of internet rage that the bunny waifus didnt look identical to how they were in FFXII. Thats just my thoughts, though.

Anyways, this is expanded in that no, they arent saying outright there wont be the opposite sex, just that to put your hopes up to high. Part of the issue theyre running into is gear and models. With the assets, getting them all to fit and work is a huge task. Its a big chunk of the reasoning why we may not see anymore races. The issues with helms highlights this point, not to mention the limitations with hairs and face styles. It is a very practical concern from a dev standpoint. They didnt have this issue so much with ARR and so it was vastly easier to add in the missing sexes.

Point is, They did set a precedent based with ARR (albiet softly), Male viera has complications, and they havent yet said no to there being opposite sexes. They want to see what the feedback is regarding this and process it. Thats about where its (or was) at. So it is reasonable for people to have certain assumptions about having both male and female.

Additionally, Yoshi P has clearly given reasoning as to why they came to the decision they did. It's not sexism or anything, its just pragmatism. And the vibe I get is if they could streamline their process and have all the time/money in the world, it would be a done deal since the current reasoning seems more an issue of justifiable practicality than anything else.

Transcript of mr. happy interview: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...vPw4uI/preview

[reivaxe]

The playerbase has a tendency to think anything the devs say becomes a 'promise' when it's mostly not. You'll see the word 'promise' every time someone complains about a piece of content that they thought to do or at least plan to do, that didn't get fulfilled yet.

I think part of the misunderstanding is that people think that them filling out the races before surely means that they have a strong stance against the idea of mono-genders but they fail to look at the bigger picture and just assume that's the case.
The game was a dumpster fire back then and they needed to fix anything and everything with in their power that they thought was holding it back. Looking at the races they had Cats/ Tots/ Elezen/ Mids/ Highs/ Roes ... HALF of the playable races were mono-gender and 2 were male only. That's pretty damn egregious and terrible for player expression.

In their blitz to solve the issues with the game it was with in their power at the time to complete the races, the game was much smaller back then and it was a do-or-die time. Now we're at a point where the game is much bigger with a tried-and-true content release pattern that people can fairly predict down to the day in some cases AND they've already added 1 full race to the line up so they would know what to expect work wise ... the race line up is also fairly diverse depending on who you ask (I personally would LOVE a small rat-like beast race and an arvg sized K9 like beast race for people who want to be cute and small but don't want a Tot and for people who want a beast race but don't want to be large ...)

So yeah, it's not ideal but it's not nearly as bad now having 1 female and 1 male race compared to back then to them. They felt they could only add 1 more male-female playable model EVER and keep up this content release pattern so they decided to try to please both camps instead of just going full Ronso.

[Melichoir]

...They felt they could only add 1 more male-female playable model EVER and keep up this content release pattern so they decided to try to please both camps instead of just going full Ronso.

Yeah but I think this is the core of the issue. While they were trying to appease two groups, I think it ended up making more problems. Now you have people wanting the opposite sex counterpart. And why not? Why shouldnt female players get a female beast girl if they want one? Why shouldnt male players get a jungle bunny boy? Lore reasons arent good enough, particularly if we know the devs decision was more to do with work load limitations.

Im still of the mindset they couldve done both if they got creative. More male viera have the body type of Hrothgar, sharper eyes and face like Aura (though not as thin), piercing eyes, bunny nose. And to make females match up, they couldve made them a bit more feral, adding chest shoulder and back fur like male hrothgar, sharper facial features, more wild hair, peircing eyes, a more prominant eyebrow ridge, possibly even fangs on both. It would be a new take on Viera where theyre more feral and less supermodel. Unfortunately, I think this kind of idea gets shot down by a very vocal "OH VIERA HAVE TO LOOK EXACTLY LIKE FFXII OR WE RIOT!" minority who want a 100% carbon copy of Fran and friends from 12. In this regards, I have a big problem with viera in general cause it feels a lot more like theyre just in here cause fans of 12 rather than being part of the universe. Same with Hrothgar to be frank.

...(I personally would LOVE a small rat-like beast race and an arvg sized K9 like beast race for people who want to be cute and small but don't want a Tot and for people who want a beast race but don't want to be large ...

Id love races like this. Particularly another small race. Theres a crap load of big/tall races already. More small medium variety would be nice.