Male Viera as a playable character! show your support

[Amnmaat]

No one knows the reason why they changed their mind on female Viera hair, it hasn't been stated. I could speculate that it was because they want to treat female Viera/male Hrothgar as one race so everything needs to be a 1 to 1 ration. Modders who mod other races' hair on Viera an attest to how Viera ears are not a problem for any female hair that exists on other races except unique ones for Miqo'te. Viera ears are similar to Au ra horns, they're unique, they're not one piece like male Hrothgar face + hair is.

As for the chances of male Viera getting added? I see them as near 0. Yoshida himself never talks about Viera in a positive light, that tends to influence his decisions, which is fine it's his game. The only issue I have is with them not saying they won't be able to add the missing genders in the next few expansions, that I would respect more than saying "if we find a way to add them we'll add them." That's more honorable than leaving people hanging for 2 years.

[AxelBranford]

Well mates, let's hope that they are included. It would be very nice....
I've faith that no excuses can be a mountain of trouble, it's just a question of time and a card at their sleeves.

[reivaxe]

No one knows the reason why they changed their mind on female Viera hair, it hasn't been stated. I could speculate that it was because they want to treat female Viera/male Hrothgar as one race so everything needs to be a 1 to 1 ration. Modders who mod other races' hair on Viera an attest to how Viera ears are not a problem for any female hair that exists on other races except unique ones for Miqo'te. Viera ears are similar to Au ra horns, they're unique, they're not one piece like male Hrothgar face + hair is.

That would be poor speculation seeing as nothing had changed in relation to how the 2 are treated between when they said "Hrothgar will get new manes and faces! Viera will get the hair styles that can work on them!" and "Viera will only get new, unique hair". The 2 races have never been treated as equal, just cause Viera can't wear helms doesn't stop Hrothgar from getting full head covering buckets and just cause Hrothgar don't have hair doesn't stop Viera from being able to change theirs. They're prob hinting at the new Hroth heads in the relic zone yet we haven't seen a new Viera hair for a NPC yet iirc and so on.

And no, I'm not saying there's a tech reason the old hair can't work. I'm saying that, from a design PoV, a number of shared hairs on Viera would just look bad because they were never made to look good with things on the top of the skull that suck up like 50% of the room up there. I've seen the mods for a number of old hairs, some turn out looking ok ... but often times the in-game styles for other races people like and try to put on them look unnatural on Viera heads cause they have bangs or braids that clip right through the ears in a very noticeable manner or are too far back for their ears and/ or fall off to the side of the head in ways that wouldn't make sense for a race without things on the side of their head.

Like I said, just like with head gear people are gonna play dumb to the clear pattern of what the devs give them and expect all new and old hair to come if they do give em some that "can work on them" from a design stand point. And if they start giving them some they either have to make all new hair be designed to look right on them ontop of reg races or exclude them from the ones that look good on others but not Viera. It would be confusing to most people. This way they get nothing but NEW HQ hair that looks good for their head shape and no one should expect them to get rando new hair number 5 for other races. Makes sense to me.

[Alleo]

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.

I mean even on the forum it was pretty clear that the old Viera threads always gotten more posts and discussion than any thread about wanting a beast race. So if SE really believed that a big amount of players would play a beast race then its on them, because its quite clear imo that it would always just be a minority. Which is why I who wanted to play a beastlike female was quite fine if we got just a complete Viera race.

Another problem is of course that on one side you have a race that already existed in other FF games (the viera) which means that at least for the females there were clear indicators on what to expect. This is not the case for a beast race. I for example would have loved to get a lupin race. Others wanted the Ronso from another FF. And many more might have liked other forms. So even if one wanted a beast race it could simply be that the Hrothgar are not of their taste, so its understandable why they are not played. (They are using the body proportions of the other least played race after all) Heck I want them to include the female versions of the Hrothgar but I am not sure if I would play one. I still need to like the look of a race to play it after all.

In the end I remember that quite a few people posted that it would be better to have a beast race for more diversity instead of the viera that would fall into the human+animal parts of it...

[Amnmaat]

That would be poor speculation seeing as nothing had changed in relation to how the 2 are treated between when they said "Hrothgar will get new manes and faces! Viera will get the hair styles that can work on them!" and "Viera will only get new, unique hair". The 2 races have never been treated as equal, just cause Viera can't wear helms doesn't stop Hrothgar from getting full head covering buckets and just cause Hrothgar don't have hair doesn't stop Viera from being able to change theirs. They're prob hinting at the new Hroth heads in the relic zone yet we haven't seen a new Viera hair for a NPC yet iirc and so on.

And no, I'm not saying there's a tech reason the old hair can't work. I'm saying that, from a design PoV, a number of shared hairs on Viera would just look bad because they were never made to look good with things on the top of the skull that suck up like 50% of the room up there. I've seen the mods for a number of old hairs, some turn out looking ok ... but often times the in-game styles for other races people like and try to put on them look unnatural on Viera heads cause they have bangs or braids that clip right through the ears in a very noticeable manner or are too far back for their ears and/ or fall off to the side of the head in ways that wouldn't make sense for a race without things on the side of their head.

Like I said, just like with head gear people are gonna play dumb to the clear pattern of what the devs give them and expect all new and old hair to come if they do give em some that "can work on them" from a design stand point. And if they start giving them some they either have to make all new hair be designed to look right on them ontop of reg races or exclude them from the ones that look good on others but not Viera. It would be confusing to most people. This way they get nothing but NEW HQ hair that looks good for their head shape and no one should expect them to get rando new hair number 5 for other races. Makes sense to me.

I don't know which 'universal' hair styles that modders have modded on Viera you are referring to, but the ones I've seen do not have those issues you describe; or so minimal that the same issues are seen on female Au ra. Clipping is like water in FFXIV, you will never eradicate it; live with it.



(this one clips on female Au ra)

Au ra



Female Au ra horns seem to get a lot of passes that female Viera horns don't seem to get. Really really strange.
So I don't know, the devs should stop worrying about perfection as far as Viera hairstyles go when letting them use the "universal" hairstyles the other female races have access to.

[reivaxe]

I mean even on the forum it was pretty clear that the old Viera threads always gotten more posts and discussion than any thread about wanting a beast race. So if SE really believed that a big amount of players would play a beast race then its on them, because its quite clear imo that it would always just be a minority. Which is why I who wanted to play a beastlike female was quite fine if we got just a complete Viera race.

Another problem is of course that on one side you have a race that already existed in other FF games (the viera) which means that at least for the females there were clear indicators on what to expect. This is not the case for a beast race. I for example would have loved to get a lupin race. Others wanted the Ronso from another FF. And many more might have liked other forms. So even if one wanted a beast race it could simply be that the Hrothgar are not of their taste, so its understandable why they are not played. (They are using the body proportions of the other least played race after all) Heck I want them to include the female versions of the Hrothgar but I am not sure if I would play one. I still need to like the look of a race to play it after all.

In the end I remember that quite a few people posted that it would be better to have a beast race for more diversity instead of the viera that would fall into the human+animal parts of it...

The common misconception here is that they make new races to be "popular". That's not why you do it, you do new races to fill in gaps in the line up to give people more options to express themselves and make the game more inviting/ appealing to people who haven't jumped on board yet.

YP out right stated they didn't know how popular Hrothgar would be but wanted to make them for the health of the game. Like I've said ... new playable races post release don't seem to be a common thing in MMOs by large. After getting into the MMO scene with GW2 I've played and fallowed many and outside of WoW (Blizzard can add new races willy nilly because their game looks like trash that plays on toasters. Armor is often times just straight up textures on the base model) most MMOs don't bother with adding new races after release. GW2 at some point said they would never do it as it's too much work, I've yet to see ESO or PSO2 add new races, Tera and B&S don't and Tera panders to the Elin players by giving them every class plus unique ones. Wild Star was made to be a game that tried to be "Hardcore WoW" and they were the only non-WoW/ FF14 MMO I've seen do post release Races it in the past decade ... that game is a dead game now cause it was too hardcore focused so rip. (Also a game like BDO doesn't count, races are just skins for race and gender locked classes there. Wanna be a boy Elf in that game then ... hope you like Bows cause archer is the only class for them.)

If all they wanted was to push potions that could profit far more off just adding a 3rd Cat Girl Clan with new HQ faces and the same animations/ body or by making hybrid races that just slap on features from other races that would easily translate without much effort (cause how hard could it be to put Elezen ears on a meddie and call it a day? People would jump all over that ... or cat ears on a lala. I mean, it would likely be a lazy money grab if done that way that would destroy the racial identity to each race in the minds of the dev team but it would be "hella popular" no doubt).

As for Hrothgar they are nothing short of a success. They are more popular than the only other comparable buff race in the game and they're a male only race of furry people that can't change their hair, that's some strong limits on the already selective interest of "furry/ beast people".
People often times forget that FF14 had to add in a number of character models withe unique animations and faces and gear proportion post release. Boi cats turned out to be very popular ... Female Roe and Female highlanders also had to be added to the game and are the lease played pc choices (That's right, there's more active Hrothgar than thighlanders who were not in the base game. Hrothgar aren't really that far behind Male Highlanders).

All these choices have value and build a world of interesting characters and options so I'll never understand this concern about something not being ultra popular. Would this game be better off having no Roe or female Elezen/ Highlanders cause they're not as popular as Meddies/ Dragos / lalas and cats?

I don't know which 'universal' hair styles that modders have modded on Viera you are referring to, but the ones I've seen do not have those issues you describe; or so minimal that the same issues are seen on female Au ra. Clipping is like water in FFXIV, you will never eradicate it; live with it.

Sir, how dare you post a mod of a fat braid going through the 4th dimension to wrap around the viera's head through their ears and say that doesn't look like a hot mess? No part of the form-n-function hair style works on Viera, even the bangs don't make sense for their heads.
I could actually go into far more detail about that but I can tell it's not worth it if that's your first picture and your "gotcha" is come very small over-lapping hair horn stuff on dragos. :/

Like I said, YP claimed they would only get some of the the shared style, those that could work on them, at first before scrapping that and saying only unique ones. Yes, I think there are SOME hair styles that can easily work on them that other races have (the legend hair for example as I said, It's basically like the really short Viera hair. Make it rain might be another one iirc. Great lengths is a hard no though, that looks like trash). There's no tech reason why "all" can't work, it's a design issue ... as in it would look bad. Much like how cats don't have all the same hair that Lalas/ humans/ elezen and roe can have. It's cause some would just look flat out bad for a race with cat ears on that part of their head so they didn't give them those when they made shared hair a thing.

But now that shared hair is a thing? They make sure every new hair at least is something all can wear ... so there will never be hair drop that's something like the Skrillex hair that Cats can't have. If they made the few that could work on Viera work they would cause confusion and expectations that everything new should work and they likely don't want more constraints on what other races can have based on it looking like trash on a Viera, nor would they want more of this head gear whining where people act like they can't follow the pattern of what does and doesn't work.

I mean, what even IS the debate here? "We can't know why they decided to not give Viera old hair"? I already pointed at the fact that the devs only thought SOME of the old hair would be viable options for them and I can point to examples like the Skrillex hair to show that the devs are willing to exclude hair options for races that they think would not work ... and I can point to how every single new hair style after the sharing of hair are hairstyles that the devs feel can work on all races. If you don't agree and think the devs should be fine with the mess you posted because of some small horn clipping (and that the only reason they don't is cause of Hrothgar cause they're tots equals even though they're never tried that way) then IDK what to tell ya, that's a you problem.

[Amnmaat]

If all they wanted was to push potions that could profit far more off just adding a 3rd Cat Girl Clan with new HQ faces and the same animations/ body or by making hybrid races that just slap on features from other races that would easily translate without much effort (cause how hard could it be to put Elezen ears on a meddie and call it a day? People would jump all over that ... or cat ears on a lala. I mean, it would likely be a lazy money grab if done that way that would destroy the racial identity to each race in the minds of the dev team but it would be "hella popular" no doubt).

As for Hrothgar they are nothing short of a success. They are more popular than the only other comparable buff race in the game and they're a male only race of furry people that can't change their hair, that's some strong limits on the already selective interest of "furry/ beast people".
People often times forget that FF14 had to add in a number of character models withe unique animations and faces and gear proportion post release. Boi cats turned out to be very popular ... Female Roe and Female highlanders also had to be added to the game and are the lease played pc choices (That's right, there's more active Hrothgar than thighlanders who were not in the base game. Hrothgar aren't really that far behind Male Highlanders).

All these choices have value and build a world of interesting characters and options so I'll never understand this concern about something not being ultra popular. Would this game be better off having no Roe or female Elezen/ Highlanders cause they're not as popular as Meddies/ Dragos / lalas and cats?

Roegadyn added that aesthetic they wanted to add with Hrothgar



If I don't see the Hrothgar tail it's always hard to tell if I'm looking at a male Roegadyn or at a Hrothgar while running around the cities or in duties. An animal face wasn't a necessity to achieve that goal, male Roegadyn already achieved that semi-beastial aesthetic, in my opinion.

[Yencat]

If I don't see the Hrothgar tail it's always hard to tell if I'm looking at a male Roegadyn or at a Hrothgar while running around the cities or in duties. An animal face wasn't a necessity to achieve that goal, male Roegadyn already achieved that semi-beastial aesthetic, in my opinion.

It wasn't necessary but I do like seeing them around the world, they look really good. But I agree with the difficulty telling Roe and Hrothgar apart until you have a closer look, maybe they should have gone with a different posture for Hrothgar. But then again, I never confuse an Elezen for a Viera even at a glance despite having a similar silhouette, so who knows.

[LaylaTsarra]

I think it's pretty hard to mistake a Roe for an Hrothgar but that's me. I see lots of them on Balmung for sure but on other servers as well. I love this pic i saw on twitter of the two new races.

[Yencat]

I think it's pretty hard to mistake a Roe for an Hrothgar but that's me. I see lots of them on Balmung for sure but on other servers as well. I love this pic i saw on twitter of the two new races.

To be honest it's mostly at a glance and if they're wearing heavy armor I can't tell the difference right away, it's also not massively important to be able to tell at a glance.

Great picture though, can Hrothgar be that colour? I seem to only ever see white or blueish/black ones