Male Viera as a playable character! show your support

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

They worked in FFXII cause world building allowed for it. The overall context of things and how they fit into that. They stuck out here because they do not fit within the overall context and lore of FFXIV.

My consistency issue is why do they not change culturally between the source and the first, when every other race does. Every other race has a different background, culture, lore, etc between the first and the source. There is no Allag Empire on the first. There was no Uldah. There was no Gridania. The history of what happens on the first is different than that of the source, and as a result the cultures are vastly different between the people of the first and source.

Lol, I mean...duh. They were created in the Ivalice world. So they had to shape the story to allow it to exist with the Viera even vaguely in mind, because remember, they existed before XII happened. We had Tactics before XII.
Ok so, Im not gonna address everything else you typed above this point, because your last Paragraph is Illuminating how Ive been viewing this conversation.

If you want to say we dont see male viera on the source cause Ivalice, Ok. But then how come we dont see them on the first? There was no Ivalice there. You could say theyre hiding, but that doesnt work as Fanow is the most fortified location from Sin Eaters in RakTika. That would be where you would hide the remaining few if that was the goal. And btw, were now past the Sin Eater threat broadly, so why are they still absent?

We can find common ground here and agree that its weird that they didnt change on the 1st. I just think its because they were still using Viera, and not some new subspecies under a different name. Such as the Elezan to Elves, or the Lalafell to Dwarves.
The Males could still easily be hiding. There is a chance we haven't seen the whole forest, we don't see the wall of light surrounding the Forest at all, so there is probly more woods out there. Or they are just really illusive. Even with the Sin Eaters gone that doesn't stop their duties as Protectors; who apparently take it more seriously then the Females.

"FFXII Lore" doesnt cut it here. It doesnt fit within FFXIV.

Im starting to realize I didnt fully factor in the 1st here, because you keep broadly saying FFXIV.
Narrow it down to Shadowbringers/the 1st instead of using XIV as a whole, we could have avoided alot of this mindless back and forth. (Even if there is a chance I got tunnel vision in some of what I read)

[Melichoir]

We can find common ground here and agree that its weird that they didnt change on the 1st. I just think its because they were still using Viera, and not some new subspecies under a different name. Such as the Elezan to Elves, or the Lalafell to Dwarves.

IIRC Viera are called Vie on the first. That change happened but about everything else culture wise between the source and first remained the same.

The Males could still easily be hiding. There is a chance we haven't seen the whole forest, we don't see the wall of light surrounding the Forest at all, so there is probly more woods out there. Or they are just really illusive. Even with the Sin Eaters gone that doesn't stop their duties as Protectors; who apparently take it more seriously then the Females.

Id give some of this credit if it played out like this in the MSQ, but thats not how things go down.

For those who may still be doing 5.0 content, Ill spoiler this. But when we go to meet with the Vie when Yshtola is with us, we are not stopped by Male Viera. In fact our first encounter with the Vie is 3 females who engage us. These stalwart protectors dont do anything to slow us down or impede us. They dont even engage us when the females willingly do. They couldve possibly done this scene differently to actually help this lore point by doing the scene more like this:

"Your group is traveling towards fanow. From an ambiguous camera shot of the tree boughs with lots of leaves, an arrow flies out and makes its way towards Yshtola. Camera zooms in on yshtola to make it seem like its gonna strike her. Instead it flies past her face just barely and embeds itself in the ground in front of the WoL. Party stops, yshtola dialogues about the viera and the guardians. Female Viera patrol emerges on the ground level and confronts the group, telling them to turn back or else. More ambiguous shots of the tree tops with a few visible arms drawing bows back implying more male viera are up high and have the drop on them, but still remain hidden in the trees. Dialogue continues, things are tense, You present the medallion. Female Viera whistle to call off the attack. Bows disappear back into trees. Party resumes moving with Viera guard group."


This is just one quick way they could address teh lore. Male viera are implied to be there, just hidden. They get the jump on you, not the ladies of Fanow. While you may get some people saying "oh they did make male viera" if you dont fully see them, it wont mean a whole lot. From a Dev perspective, they can literally use Elezen models for bits of this as youll only really see the arms. Even if you dont want to show the bows being drawn back, the cutscene could still play out the same more or less.

"After he arrow embeds itself in the ground, have a top down long shot of the group with the camera slowly panning around them. Put arrow drawing sound effects (dozens) in to imply more arrows are being notched. Have Yshtola tell everyone to remain calm. Female Vieras present htemselves, remarking on how excellent the men of their species are at hunting and staying hidden. rest of seen plays out as before."

Both of these scenes are just something I threw together in 10 minutes with half a thought. They by no means are amazing, but it does the point and addresses a lot of lore issues in regards to the Vie on the first at the least and where hte males are at. Small changes like this can make a world of difference in storybuilding, and I dont buy it the devs couldnt think this out.

Im starting to realize I didnt fully factor in the 1st here, because you keep broadly saying FFXIV.
Narrow it down to Shadowbringers/the 1st instead of using XIV as a whole, we could have avoided alot of this mindless back and forth. (Even if there is a chance I got tunnel vision in some of what I read)

I kept using FFXIV as a broad point because ShB is built upon pre-existing norms and lore. It is the sum of all its lore, and how the inserted Viera lore from FFXII doesnt quite fit within what already existed. When you include ShB content too, it gets even more wonky. And my prediction is future content that deals with the Viera and their culture will make things more complicated and convoluted unless they address issues that exist because the FFXII lore doesnt fit with the FFXIV lore.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Id give some of this credit if it played out like this in the MSQ, but thats not how things go down.

Cute idea, it could have happened that way, it just simply didn't. Once again this is more of a 'You guys just don't accept it' kinda of deal, but Im not against the idea that it could have played out that way. My only counter idea, which is more of a loose guess because I have nothing more to go off of, Maybe the Males where just elsewhere in the Forest, possibly in parts we haven't explored. We dot know how big that Forest actually is.

I kept using FFXIV as a broad point because ShB is built upon pre-existing norms and lore. It is the sum of all its lore, and how the inserted Viera lore from FFXII doesnt quite fit within what already existed. When you include ShB content too, it gets even more wonky. And my prediction is future content that deals with the Viera and their culture will make things more complicated and convoluted unless they address issues that exist because the FFXII lore doesnt fit with the FFXIV lore.

But do you not see the issue with your statement here when you Previously said "If no Male Viera on the Source because of Ivalice. Ok" But then when you keep talking about how the Viera stick out and its inconsistent you are in fact just talking about how they are the same on the 1st and why its bad. That is a separate world that has no baring on the Source. If you missed it I agree with you that its weird that the Viera are the same on the 1st, what Im now not getting is how their portrayal on the 1st effect them at all on the Source. Which is starting to sound like the next argument here since you insist on using FFXIV in a broad stroke even though you are just talking about one section that wouldn't have any effect on the narrative on the source.

Lol, so close to coming to an understand that could have stopped this.

[Melichoir]

Cute idea, it could have happened that way, it just simply didn't. Once again this is more of a 'You guys just don't accept it' kinda of deal, but Im not against the idea that it could have played out that way. My only counter idea, which is more of a loose guess because I have nothing more to go off of, Maybe the Males where just elsewhere in the Forest, possibly in parts we haven't explored. We dot know how big that Forest actually is.

Yeah, it didnt play out that way. Instead they relied on pre-existing copy/pasted FFXII lore to explain where the men were at. No demonstration of that lore in game to actually try and make it work. It was literally just "Remember that lore from 12, yeah, thats what were thinkin, so lets just repeat it again. Bonus points for nostalgia and homages". The problem is that the lore isnt even consistent in game. Why the hell would the girls be the ones to meet you in combat when its the males that are supposed to be around and about protecting the forest from intruders? The actions taken counter the lore given.

That is terrible narrative design, and considering how thoughtful ShB is broadly when it comes to lore and narrative, this is pretty egregious. But again, the reason why this happened was specifically cause Meta reasons. Thats the problem a few, like myself, have with the whole 'lore' schtick. It doesnt fit, doesnt try to fit, and the devs botched it pretty bad in regards to how to handle it.

As for them being in other parts of the woods, the trouble with that goes back to what Fanow is - the last real Viera settlement. The others are gone. So, where exactly are these forest protectors hanging out. What exactly are they protecting. It cant be the Ronkan ruins cause the base of operations for protecting those ruins and keeping to the oath the Vie have is Fanow. And none of them are back at Fanow for any reason? Resupplying? Healing up? Protecting? Delivering Reports? Anything at all? Every last one is out of the settlement? I am well aware you can write lore however you want, but if you want to keep things feeling consistent and not break immersion by being a trash writer, you gotta stick to what is expected.

FFXIV has already established that the people existing in it are fairly competent. Theyre not 1-D cartoon caricatures where slapstick logic is how the world goes. They tend to try and think stuff out and do what makes broadly the most sense. So it doesnt make sense for the Viera to behave this way on the first (or even on the source).

But do you not see the issue with your statement here when you Previously said "If no Male Viera on the Source because of Ivalice. Ok" But then when you keep talking about how the Viera stick out and its inconsistent you are in fact just talking about how they are the same on the 1st and why its bad. That is a separate world that has no baring on the Source.

If you missed it I agree with you that its weird that the Viera are the same on the 1st, what Im now not getting is how their portrayal on the 1st effect them at all on the Source. Which is starting to sound like the next argument here since you insist on using FFXIV in a broad stroke even though you are just talking about one section that wouldn't have any effect on the narrative on the source.

Lol, so close to coming to an understand that could have stopped this.

I was humoring your thoughts that "Well Ivalice exists, so therefore Viera lore exists as it is." The problem with that stance is there is no Ivalice on the first, so you cant argue that the Viera lore on the first should exist like that. Yet for some poor in-world reason, they do.

The issue with this is illustrating the overall problem with just copy/pasting lore from another game into this one. It doesnt work because its not written to work. As you have agreed to, the lore for Viera works in FFXII because it was written to be a cohesive element of that world. But as Im saying, it doesnt fit into 14's lore and narrative because the world building is set up differently. This all adds up to a simple conclusion: The lore sucks, wasnt thought out, and doesnt work in FFXIV, and using it as the reason for why no male viera is silly.

The dev's poorly attempted to use that very same lore that would work for one world, on both worlds. This creates an inconsistency in the world building. It couldve been argued "ok the source has the 'Ivalice lore' where the first would have completely different cultural norms". Fine, Ill humor that for the sake of discussion. But then you run into explaining why you dont see males on the first. Which means you now have to craft brand new lore to explain that. And that in of itself is a whole can of worms. As an example, where are the female Hrothgars on the first? We know where tehy are on the source, and it can work in that context, but what about the first? Whats left of the first is pretty small in comparison to the source. So are they hanging out in a cave somewhere? Why? Why not hang out at the Chrystarium with the shield and weapons it has against sin eaters. Or they all extinct, thus Hrothgars on the first are pretty screwed. Gender locking and setting up the story like so results in issues like this.

If you make it so that the first has the 'Ivalice' culture norms and lore, then you are stuck explaining why it was established in SB that viera on the source have the same cultural norms when every other race doesnt. This is the problem I keep trying to get you to understand, and it seems by what you are saying to me, you understand it pretty broadly. The FFXII lore couldve worked potentially with minor tweaks to it IF we never went to Norvrandt. The fact we do go there, we see how the first and the source differ, how more of the world building was explained, makes the viera lore from 12 work less and less.

Thats the trouble, and thats why theres a few like me who reject the "Lore reasons" as why we dont see male viera. The lore reasons are just filler the devs stuck in cause of misguided reasons. Thats it. Thats the only reason. The lore reasons dont work within the context of 14 as it currently is, and is somewhat world breaking by trying to force those lore reasons. If they keep forcing it down teh road with the next xpac, you're gonna start running into more of those "Dont think about it" issues, like where are female Hrothgars on the first. And the trouble with those "Dont Think About It" issues is they tend to snowball. You leave a big enough plot hole, and it can derail your story.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Yeah, it didnt play out that way. Instead they relied on pre-existing copy/pasted FFXII lore to explain where the men were at. No demonstration of that lore in game to actually try and make it work. It was literally just "Remember that lore from 12, yeah, thats what were thinkin, so lets just repeat it again. Bonus points for nostalgia and homages". The problem is that the lore isnt even consistent in game. Why the hell would the girls be the ones to meet you in combat when its the males that are supposed to be around and about protecting the forest from intruders? The actions taken counter the lore given.

That is terrible narrative design, and considering how thoughtful ShB is broadly when it comes to lore and narrative, this is pretty egregious. But again, the reason why this happened was specifically cause Meta reasons. Thats the problem a few, like myself, have with the whole 'lore' schtick. It doesnt fit, doesnt try to fit, and the devs botched it pretty bad in regards to how to handle it.

As for them being in other parts of the woods, the trouble with that goes back to what Fanow is - the last real Viera settlement. The others are gone. So, where exactly are these forest protectors hanging out. What exactly are they protecting. It cant be the Ronkan ruins cause the base of operations for protecting those ruins and keeping to the oath the Vie have is Fanow. And none of them are back at Fanow for any reason? Resupplying? Healing up? Protecting? Delivering Reports? Anything at all? Every last one is out of the settlement? I am well aware you can write lore however you want, but if you want to keep things feeling consistent and not break immersion by being a trash writer, you gotta stick to what is expected.

FFXIV has already established that the people existing in it are fairly competent. Theyre not 1-D cartoon caricatures where slapstick logic is how the world goes. They tend to try and think stuff out and do what makes broadly the most sense. So it doesnt make sense for the Viera to behave this way on the first (or even on the source).

So... guess my counter to the 1st point is...the males live separately from the Females. As far as I can tell this is still consistent, so basically if it was the Males that were gonna meet us, then it would be a village of Males. And the simple reasoning here why this didn't happen, is because there is no in game model of a Male Viera. And if there was, everyone would be clamoring why arn't they playable.
And we already know why we dont "currently-maybe" have Males.

To everything else....just because its the last 'Real' settlement doesn't mean the Males need to suddenly all congregate there. There is no reason they can't being in their own little camps or have a smaller base somewhere else. Again...we don't know how big that Forest actually is.

I was humoring your thoughts that "Well Ivalice exists, so therefore Viera lore exists as it is." The problem with that stance is there is no Ivalice on the first, so you cant argue that the Viera lore on the first should exist like that. Yet for some poor in-world reason, they do.

We already agreed on this. I already pointed out that I agree with you that its weird that its this way on the 1st.
At this point I think you just like saying it. Its getting tiring to read when its already been addressed.
So...again. Is your whole rant here against no Male Viera solely because it doesn't work on the 1st?
This-We-Can-AGREE-On.
So I dont understand why we are still talking about it.

Or is your Point that Viera lore doesn't work in XIV as a whole, because of the 1st?
Because this makes no sense. Nothing on the Source would stop or change the Viera lore, what is different that effects the Viera lore that would just mean they are that different from XII or just Tactics? How does the 1st effect the Source? It doesn't.
Regardless if your lying and just saying you agree to it to soften me up and get your point across,...your whole rant keeps going back to the 1st. And you keep lumping the 1st and the Source together, while primarily talking about the 1st. When I think Im leaning towards agreeing with you, I kinda keep losing you because you keep talking about XIV so broadly, when your whole argument, is just the 1st.
Which-I-Agree - It-is-weird.
How many times do I have to agree with you? The Viera lore on the 1st, Is weird. When I take all your posts and narrow them to the 1st. It makes sense.
But when you involve the Source, you lose me.

[Burmecia]

Wut? Did you lose the joke? I don't actually care, he just said it alot that I wanted to use that meme so this dam thread isn't so bloody serious all the time XD
Need to break up the arguments and bickering with some fun every once in a while. Thats why I found that "Uno Reverse Card" thing so great.

You find people agreeing on something Creepy. Lol
And because thats just how the Viera were made. This hivemind point is silly and made up because I guess people just cant fathom something not deviating like everything else.

- Yup. Lost the kinda oddly used image macro.

To lighten up the mood or whatev

- Still think that remix describes the playable race development pretty alright. Maybe you prefer some other explanation, that's ok.

- Why I would not find extreme conformity little creepy?

I brought up their freewill because of this notion of total and utter conformity, across all time, for males, because we see for Females that they do break away from tradition, if the Females of their race can do so what is preventing every male ever in all of time from not doing so? Are they a hive mind? Are the mindless beasts with no will beyond what ever nature drives them? (A men are beasts, woman are breasts senario) Is someone or something stoping them, all of them, ever, in all of time? This is why I brought up their freewill, even is super homogeneous cultures you will have outliers, individuals who deviate.

- I never played Tactics games, so Fran was my first Viera friend. She was an outcast in the eyes of other Eruyt Village viera. Other FF games of my early adolescence? I ran with eco-terrorist group, helped resistance group against military dictatorship, kidnapped princess and rose against queen turned tyrannical and narcissistic mage threatening to eradicate all life, discontinue false tradition to continue world's cycle of death as the reigning world religion had arranged for millenia. To me FF brand, it's stories and especially it's characters (among whom I count our adventurer to be in) have always been anything but about extreme conformity.