Male Viera as a playable character! show your support

[BadLala]

"you can't simply just throw money." I think some are not native English speakers and think that if it doesn't include money, then it's not a cost. So I'll just leave one of the definitions of cost from Merriam-Webster here.

Definition of cost: 2- loss or penalty incurred especially in gaining something (the cost of lives during war).

Degraded quality and lost development time are the cost of gaining more playable races. You can even still tie this back to money if it causes you to lose players.

[Melichoir]

So it shows that he never saw genderlocking as an issue and the reason that the missing genders in 1.0 were a "must add", according to Yoshida, was the high demand for them.

Wouldnt this imply that there was an issue with genderlocking - a demand for something people wanted and genderlocking runs counter to that demand?

Im not contesting your claim that YoshiP never promised anything, and the reason to add the off sexes was one of demand and pragmatism, but this being said it was quickly apparent that splitting up the races (making only female Viera nad Male Hrothgar, annnnd to switch design gears to include Female Viera halfway through ShB production sched) was probably the wrong choice to make. They ended up including Female Viera at the cost of Female Hrothgar (it was stated by YoshiP that Hrothgar were in Development IIRC well before female viera to give a more 'monster race' niche to help compete against games like WoW - or rather to give WoW players more beastly options) because they said that this would likely be the last chance to add a new race and Viera was still in high demand. What it boiled down to is they tried to do the best of both worlds, and ended up mismanaging it.

Yes, you would get some disappointment with no Viera if you went Hrothgar M/F, but it could be explained that "This is FFXIV and were doing something else." Which is fine. Or you couldve went full Viera, and introduced M Viera but wouldnt satisfy the players who wanted more beastly races.

What they did is reveal female viera, let fan speculation run wild with the use previously established examples of M Miqote and F Roe, and people got super hyped for Male Viera - something that wouldve been a first and in some demand. Only to pull the rug out by saying "Nah check out Hrothgars". It was kind of a wtf moment. they shouldve just stuck with one or the other cause this middle ground leaves a lot of people disappointed and wanting. Particularly considering the issues with customization on both viera and Hrothgar. It was a misstep.

From Yoshida's butt slider response recently, it shows that they do not have an automated way of adjusting clothes that clip with large butts and would have to do that manually. Which is why a simple slider request is hard to satisfy. But if they were to automate these processes so that it requires little to no work when adjusting a gear piece for all races, then we'd not only see male Viera and female Hrothgar, but also other races in the future can be possible if the game still continues.

The unfortunate truth is they need to rebuild the character engine. It was probably in vogue at the time to have the engine operate the way it does, along with saving costs by salvaging it from 1.0, but it is obviously showing the inflexible nature of it now. It might be in their better interests to bite the bullet and just rebuild the character creation engine. It is hyper expensive, but will prolong the lifespan of the game. Cause with each xpac, thats more armor models and gear they need to adjust for, whcih is cost inefficient long term. So it will actually end up limiting how many xpacs they can create or how much they can put into it.

[WhiteArchmage]

They ended up including Female Viera at the cost of Female Hrothgar (it was stated by YoshiP that Hrothgar were in Development IIRC well before female viera to give a more 'monster race' niche to help compete against games like WoW - or rather to give WoW players more beastly options) because they said that this would likely be the last chance to add a new race and Viera was still in high demand. What it boiled down to is they tried to do the best of both worlds, and ended up mismanaging it.

I actually DO have a source for that! MrHappy's interview with Yoshi-P (transcription in the description). It's the very first question but it's quite long; relevant parts are:

When I took over for ARR, I wanted to fill the missing genders to make those races seem complete. What is different now compared to then, after multiple expansions, the situation isn’t the same as when we released the base game.

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.

Especially for FF14, we have many symbols of power or strength such as Highlander and Roegadyns. We wanted something more animal like. Its not that we wanted to create a wild west of characters, but we do need a good variety. So the simple answer is: Viera was sought after so we had to add those. To expand the game and its options, we also wanted to add Hrothgar.

MrHappy's interview is the closest we've had to a definite answer from Yoshi-P on the matter of the missing genders:

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. We did expect strong feedback on the gender lock. It was a tough decision, but we decided to do our best to meet both the player feedback and our development team’s vision. It will be very costly to add a new race or genders. So I won’t say no, but I would not like to set expectations high.

[Melichoir]

snips

Ill have to take your word at this, but I do distinctly remember YoshiP stating that Hrothgar development started Before Viera, and that viera came later in the dev cycle and not the other way around. The reason why this sticks to my mind so much si that the initial narrative on reddit and the forums was that they developed Viera First but it was later corrected that Viera came second in the dev cycle, while Hrothgar was on the table since the start of ShB development.

I could very well be misremembering. But this all being said, it doesnt change the end result. They tried to do both things and ended up not really handling it well.

In fact, it actually mightve been much better, PR wise, to intro Hrothgar First, then Female Viera.

While Im nto crossing fingers, I am hoping that (Covid Aside) the reason why some development things slowed down as well as what we can consider an uptick in Mogstation items is cause tehyre devoting more resources and time to either correct the customization issues of Viera Hrothgar annnnnd give us the off sexes.

[Amnmaat]

Ill have to take your word at this, but I do distinctly remember YoshiP stating that Hrothgar development started Before Viera, and that viera came later in the dev cycle and not the other way around. The reason why this sticks to my mind so much si that the initial narrative on reddit and the forums was that they developed Viera First but it was later corrected that Viera came second in the dev cycle, while Hrothgar was on the table since the start of ShB development.

I could very well be misremembering. But this all being said, it doesnt change the end result. They tried to do both things and ended up not really handling it well.

In fact, it actually mightve been much better, PR wise, to intro Hrothgar First, then Female Viera.

While Im nto crossing fingers, I am hoping that (Covid Aside) the reason why some development things slowed down as well as what we can consider an uptick in Mogstation items is cause tehyre devoting more resources and time to either correct the customization issues of Viera Hrothgar annnnnd give us the off sexes.

Agree, if the reason we're getting so few hairstyles, or none at all is because they're working on adding the missing genders in 6.0. Too bad they can't let us know that until fanfests. I would personally spend extra money on mogstation dyes just to support the development of male Viera.

[WhiteArchmage]

Snip

Oh, I wasn't trying to contradict you, actually... I distinctly remember Yoshi-P stating that Hroth were considered before Viera but I thought it was in MrHappy's interview, which has it backwards. However, it DID make me look for the other source in this thread

Q: When did you decide to implement the female-only Viera and male-only Hrothgar?

A: It was during Return to Ivalice, around 3 months after 4.0. Viera was confirmed then, and Hrothgar came about at the same time when we were discussing plans with Matsuno-san. We were deciding whether to make a Hrothgar female or a Viera female, and after selecting Viera, work began right away, because otherwise we wouldn't make it in time. As mentioned before, the face parts are special and Hrothgar has big differences between its faces, like a lion face, wolf face, leopard face. It became a fixed model relatively recently. Viera was done right before Paris Fan Fest, and Hrothgar was done recently.

Which means either Yoshi-P gave conflicting info or the timeline is kinda muddied there... That said, I agree with your points: by trying to make both sides happy, they ended up creating a larger problem (BESIDES the limited headgear and hairstyles), and if Hroth were revealed before Viera the initial pushback may not have been as dramatic.

Here's hoping they're working on both the lack of customization and genders.

[BadLala]

Wouldnt this imply that there was an issue with genderlocking - a demand for something people wanted and genderlocking runs counter to that demand?

Yeah, I can see that now. From the interview WhiteArchmage shared, it shows he did see an issue with missing genders back then. But it doesn’t seem like he considered it to be a massive issue that he wouldn’t ever do or promised not to do as some make it to be. It’s more like other undesirable decisions they have to make based on the constraints they have (like delaying the release of some content).

What they did is reveal female viera, let fan speculation run wild with the use previously established examples of M Miqote and F Roe, and people got super hyped for Male Viera - something that wouldve been a first and in some demand. Only to pull the rug out by saying "Nah check out Hrothgars". It was kind of a wtf moment. they shouldve just stuck with one or the other cause this middle ground leaves a lot of people disappointed and wanting. Particularly considering the issues with customization on both viera and Hrothgar. It was a misstep.

That’s what they did wrong and deserve the backlash (not the homophobic stuff) they got. I even remember reading a Mr. Happy interview where he asked Yoshida about male Viera and he said “the lore explains it and oh, we have Tokyo Fanfest coming soon” (something along those lines IIRC lol). It would have been much less impactful if they said everything upfront and not let our hopes build up to be suddenly crushed at Fanfest. But I'm guessing they didn't wanna ruin the Hrothgar revel. At least they acknowledged that it was a mistake on how they handled it.

In fact, it actually mightve been much better, PR wise, to intro Hrothgar First, then Female Viera.

That would have been much better imo than how they’ve done it. But as WhiteArchmage linked, there are conflicting stories on which race was done first. They probably decided to work on Hrothgar, then decided to add Viera. But the actual modeling started on Viera first in 4.2 rather than Hrothgar. So it might not have been possible to show Hrothgar first. But that’s my assumption.

But I’m curious on how everyone here would react if Hrothgar was shown first and announced to be male only and another female race would be announced later.

[Theodric]

As I see it, they took a gamble and underestimated the amount of people who were interested in playing as a male Viera and overestimated the amount of people who were interested in playing a beast race.

At the moment, male Hrothgar are among the least played race/gender combination in the game. I've always felt as though the push for a beast race in this game was more about people wanting to see one added to the game rather than because they wanted to play one themselves. In other words, a lot of the people pushing for Viera to be added fully intended to play one, whereas many of those pushing for a beast race weren't nearly as committed.

What's done is done, though. I only hope we see the missing genders added to the game and get a meaningful revamp of the character customisation for every race/gender combination in the game.

It's a lot of work, though it's the best way to ensure that the majority of players are happy. It'll also encourage people to try out different playable races if some of the glaring issues/limitations are fixed.

[Crushnight]

But I’m curious on how everyone here would react if Hrothgar was shown first and announced to be male only and another female race would be announced later.

I would still hate the decision, period, I don't like it but at least it is aesthetics and not gameplay that is genderlocked(in), and It most likely would've been the female Hrothgar thread that be as long as this one.

The conflicting reports over what came in development 1st has not been dispelled so both are right and wrong at same time so it is best to discount that argument until such a time they clarify(they won't or would've done by now), however the consistency is that they made the decision around 4.1. So we have a timeframe for it.

So have to look at 5.1 details to determine if they are thinking on it or not. The only thing that may be an indication they are looking at it is their stance on Hrothgar and Viera hairstyles changed from trying to give them existing hairstyles to giving new racial ones. But I think this is more a case of when the devs gave these the headgears they got, they caused more work for the hairstyles and decided against giving old ones, than any indication missing genders are being looked at.

[reivaxe]

I would still hate the decision, period, I don't like it but at least it is aesthetics and not gameplay that is genderlocked(in), and It most likely would've been the female Hrothgar thread that be as long as this one.

The conflicting reports over what came in development 1st has not been dispelled so both are right and wrong at same time so it is best to discount that argument until such a time they clarify(they won't or would've done by now), however the consistency is that they made the decision around 4.1. So we have a timeframe for it.

So have to look at 5.1 details to determine if they are thinking on it or not. The only thing that may be an indication they are looking at it is their stance on Hrothgar and Viera hairstyles changed from trying to give them existing hairstyles to giving new racial ones. But I think this is more a case of when the devs gave these the headgears they got, they caused more work for the hairstyles and decided against giving old ones, than any indication missing genders are being looked at.

I think arguing over "who was planned first" is a fool's game. We wont know the exacts of their dev cycle and planning ever and things like new races take a ton of time regardless. The only thing I think is important is the reason "why" they were added.

From everything YP has said about the topic it appears that Hrothgar were a thing they really wanted to do and were excited about adding to the game in part as a response for desires for some kinda beast raced PCs (both among the team and fanbase) and also for the general reason a MMO would bother adding a stupidly pricey cosmetic known as a new race ... to add visual diversity and fill in unfilled wholes in their line up (I will point out that outside of WoW new races are damn rare in MMOs and double so in Eastern ones. Last non-WoW/ FF14 MMO I remember adding a race was Wild Star with their murder Hamsters and Space Zombie Cyborgs .. which mirror that reasoning behind the first Reptile looking race and the first Beast race of FF14 in that both are visually very different to what's in game and something the devs were excited to add). Viera was something they seemed to feel like they were just browbeaten into doing cause people have been whining about it since the reveal of their original FF14 race in HW.

So if they did what they and a sizable number of fans wanted we would have both genders for Hrothgar, if they only did what the fanbase was most asking for we would have both Viera genders.

As for hair, they did change their tune on Viera getting "some" of the old styles to now only getting unique ones though Hroth were never gonna get traditional hair. Looking at Viera hair and knowing that even when they were going to get old shared styles it would only be "the ones that could work" gives me a picture on why they changed it to be only unique. Design-wise Viera hair respects their ears and the team wants hair to look natural on the body of who ever wears it. They have never had the constraints of Viera ear placement til now so looking at shared hairs I only see a handful that pass the "Viera Ear Test" where it could look natural on them without any major redesigns. But most people aren't going to understand this and think that "if X works then why not all of them or the new ones?!?" (much like with head gear where it's clear what kinda head gear can work but people still expect more than that) and plus Hair styles didn't really start looking HQ until fairly recently anyway. So they just decided that Viera should only have their own unique hair as to prob not give the expectation to every new hair for other races would or should work for them.

Likely a better choice in the long run TBH. NO OTHER race gets new racial hair and giving them the handful of old ones that would work would prob keep them from having some really cool ones later on that could really be on par with their release ones. Plus they said something in the recent art stream that makes me think some Viera hair will be like the "fran Style" where it comes with an undyable helmet made for Viera heads.