Quote Originally Posted by DBriggs304 View Post
We knew well before product release and anytime we think Viera, we think Fran.

We knew.
We all knew.
This is a cop out. Youre essentially saying "Oh you know that game some people played where it had its own world building and lore, yeah thats going to be a copy/paste here so dont even expect male viera at all."

But since you wanted to pull the lore angle as "Well we all knew", then lets work this out. Lore, in game, stated that male miqote are a lot more rare, yet that was changed for 2.0 for more player options. So that immediately set a soft precedent with handling lore and off sexes. Furthermore every race has had an off sex paired with it. Every single one, since 2.0. So again, there is a soft precedent that if you see a race, it will provide you the off sexes. Then the lore itself doesnt actually make a full load of sense overall for the FFXIV universe. In FF12, the set up for viera made sense cause it was a part of the world building, a small subset of the world that you had some interaction with, and was within a closed 1 player perspective.

For ffxiv, you dont have that luxury. Because the game is designed for a male/female character system dynamic, it necessitated that there had to not only now be lore for why only female viera, but also lore for only male Hrothgar. At a glance this works just fine - Males stick to the forests kind of deal, and Hrothgar females are rare so you dont see them to much. However, this only makes sense initially cause then when you get to norvrandt, the whole consistency falls apart.

For people who havent gotten here yet, while the races may appear a bit similar between the two worlds they are not culturally the same. Miqote seem to be more inclined for business and trade, and are less tribal on Norvrandt. The elezen dont give two craps about the woods, Lalafells are dwarves and are a territorial industrious race that keeps to themselves and arent heavily involved in trade. Etc etc. The races have different cultural standards. Even Hrothgar seems to imply that females being the norm isnt unusual on Norvrandt with the quest line in Ahm Arang. However, for whatever reason Viera seem to keep the same exact lore standards as is implied on the source. They keep to the forest, males dont venture out and are rare cause theyre busy behaving as forest protectors or what ever.

This gets worse because of the actual world considerations on Norvrandt. Fanow is more or less the last Viera settlement, slowly being pushed to the brink from sin eaters. Furthermore, Viera females seem to have no problem leaving the woods and living their own lives or entertaining the idea of finding help outside of the forest. The males are still no where to be seen, not anywhere near the last settlement of viera, they dont engage you what-so-ever when you travel deeper into Rak tikka with Yshtola (yet the females from Fanow do). What in hells name are they doing? And then there's the issue of not a single Male viera might have the gumption that their world is on the precipice of literal annihilation to possibly forgo cultural norms like some of their female counter parts and look for aid or life elsewhere? Females have agency but the males are gonna stick to that cultural norm no matter what, even in the face of the apocalypse? You might be able to argue this on the source to some extent, but Norvrandt's situation is a lot more dire. So for some reason Viera specifically has the same cultural norms between both worlds, and when the world is on the brink of annihilation, the males seem to still stick to their cultural norms, despite females doing what ever they want. They dont even act as proper forest protectors as we traverse pretty deeply into the woods and the first encounters with Viera is with the females, not males.


This is the issue with the lore from FFXII. It doesnt fit within FFXIVs universe. At a glance, it can loosely work, but in an MMO environment + the world building involved with FFXIV as well as soft precedent, the Viera Lore doesnt fit. It does plenty fine in a single player game where its nicely incorporated into it, but not here in the MMO environment with the pre-existing lore. The lore is pretty damn flimsy, because you can literally overturn the entirety of the viera lore with simple idea that "Desperate times call for desperate measures." Every player would go "Oh yeah, that makes sense why we start seeing male viera all of a sudden. Things are bad."

Pretty much if you can undo the lore with one line, either your lore isnt very well put together or the lore doesnt fit with the world.

Now we all know the meta reason why we dont see male viera - the devs couldnt develop both. Limited time and resources with certain goals, they couldnt develop 4 model types (Male/Fem Viera, Male/Fem Hrothgar), and because one of their goals was to have a more beast like race, this is the compromise they ran with. Mind you no one really knew what was going. They figured itd work out, but frankly I think people were expecting male viera and were somewhat disappointed when hrothgar was introduced. And for, as I said, reasonable reasons.