what excuse will they use for there being no female hrothgar in the bozja citadel?

[Kesey]

What was their excuse for not giving Yugiri a face before 3.0?

What was their excuse for there being no Au'ra, Viera or Hrothgar NPC's before those races were made?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Yugiri enters the story around the time Heavensward was well into planning, so they purposely hide her face to reveal the new race later.

[Draginhikari]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Yugiri enters the story around the time Heavensward was well into planning, so they purposely hide her face to reveal the new race later.

Yes, the Au Ra's character models were not ready yet at the time she was brought into the story in 2.2, so they instead used a modified Miq'ote model for her design until her full Au Ra designs were implement around the time of 2.55 where her real model with the correct Animations and appearance were shown for the first time.

[Riardon]

The rush to introduce half baked races created problems.
The idea of limited races was a very bad one.
They shouldn't focus on introducing new races but enhancing the current ones with better customization.
Au Ra was handled pretty well but they should've stopped there with adding new races.

[Kesey]

The rush to introduce half baked races created problems.
The idea of limited races was a very bad one.
They shouldn't focus on introducing new races but enhancing the current ones with better customization.
Au Ra was handled pretty well but they should've stopped there with adding new races.

Honestly, if it was just Hrothgar (male and female) with no Viera, the implementation with the current content would have synergized well. But hey, people wanted their bunny girls.

[Cilia]

Honestly, if it was just Hrothgar (male and female) with no Viera, the implementation with the current content would have synergized well. But hey, people wanted their bunny girls.

Something to keep in mind is that lore is written to accommodate gameplay. To my knowledge Bozja was not written explicitly with the Hrothgar in mind, they just used it as a way to establish the Hrothgar in the setting despite them having not been around (playable or otherwise) until 5.0.

That said... when you sell your game on fanservice... and shamelessly throw in as many references to Matsuno's works as you possibly can... to the point of bringing the man himself on as a "guest" writer... and Viera are an icon of his work (whether you like them or not)... people are going to expect they be put in-game as a playable race, for good or ill.

All the fanservice does have a cost.

[TheMightyMollusk]

What was their excuse for not giving Yugiri a face before 3.0?

Yugiri says in her first appearance that she's keeping her face covered because her appearance might cause problems. Given that it's later established in the 50-60 dark knight and white mage job quests that the first Au Ra to arrive in Ishgard were turned away, then hunted down and butchered, purely based on their appearance, she has a point. It just seems odd to us now because we can start as an Au Ra and nobody bats an eye.

The meta reason, as someone else said above, is that the Au Ra models weren't finished yet, so she has a modified Miqo'te model until she's unmasked in 2.55.