Male Viera as a playable character! show your support

[Theodric]

I managed to find the interview. It was from 2013.

Q38: In terms of new races, what kind of races are you looking into and will mixed races be introduced?

A38: I don’t think we’ll have mixed races for a while. Since it seems like Viera is popular around the world we have been proactively looking into this, but since having a rabbit male might be kind of weird, maybe we’ll look into having a separate race for the male counterpart.


Source: https://www.siliconera.com/square-ta...baby-behemoth/

[WhiteArchmage]

Snip

Hah! Right as I edited my post

[SturmChurro]

Both rabbit males and males in the bunny outfit are kind of weird, so I do agree with Yoshida here.

[MikkoAkure]

There's also a strong track record of the development team adding things based on popular requests, so I see no harm in people continuing to ask for the missing genders to be added so long as they remain civil.

I'm also sorry for coming at you, but you're never going to clean up the mess that is going back on their word. They added missing genders for 2.0 and say they'll never do it again... only to do it again and twice no less! They have 2 choices: add the missing genders or continue to get chewed out at every turn about it until they do it or XIV shuts down.

SE has said and done a lot of things they have either gone back on or never implemented like new egi glamour, FC airships that ferry people around to inaccessible areas, body hair, and PvP with destructible forts. Then there's the things that people have been asking for that have been treated the same as male viera and we've been given the response "maybe later", like stubble and other character creator options, BLU that isn't limited, hair for the new races, and instanced housing. Instead, we get low hanging fruit like being able to eat while sitting down and being able to walk around in empty dungeons. Or we have them sink a lot of development time and effort into things that one or a few devs think will be a great idea but wasn't asked for, and never gets widely adapted by players, or is abandoned after the next expansion, like Lords of Verminion, Doman Mahjong, the first few versions of Diadem, and Eureka.

I'm not sure why male viera is the hill people have chosen to die on.

Viera were the most requested new race back when polls were done in 2012. SE decided that they're just going to do what they want and we got two of the lowest requested races: reptilian demi-beastman and male only for mammalian beastman in addition to the incomplete viera. I've played since 1.0 beta and long ago decided that SE is going to do what SE wants to do and we're pretty much just here for the ride. The forums give the devs the temperature on how we feel on certain things as well as ideas for quick hits that will satisfy the community, but we're not as powerful as people think we are and this thread can go to 3k likes without SE spending any time or effort in developing male viera.

[LisSquid]

I managed to find the interview. It was from 2013.

Q38: In terms of new races, what kind of races are you looking into and will mixed races be introduced?

A38: I don’t think we’ll have mixed races for a while. Since it seems like Viera is popular around the world we have been proactively looking into this, but since having a rabbit male might be kind of weird, maybe we’ll look into having a separate race for the male counterpart.


Source: https://www.siliconera.com/square-ta...baby-behemoth/

There's the mythical interview! Thank you very much! I went looking for it and, for the life of me, could not find anything previous to 2019. What he says there doesn't sound like he might mean "I think bunny men are weird." It sounds, at least to me, that it would be weird to see them possibly in the context of them having never been seen before? The response doesn't go into it, and nuance might have been lost in translation.

Both rabbit males and males in the bunny outfit are kind of weird, so I do agree with Yoshida here.

I just think the bunny outfit is ugly. Pants wouldn't be terrible if the mesh didn't have that awful pink tone that looks terrible on anyone who isn't a fleshy, pale skintone.

I'd rather we see a return to the Ivalice games where they introduce male viera. We're kind of fooling ourselves into thinking they will get any kind of depth or attention if they are added to 14. A quick "oh, we found one." Added to creation screen. Never brought up again.

[Undeadfire]

What he says there doesn't sound like he might mean "I think bunny men are weird." It sounds, at least to me, that it would be weird to see them possibly in the context of them having never been seen before?

Pretty much weird as in they're casually walking around the world. As I said Viera are 80% chance of being Female born. We can see SE very much likes to stick with this lore since Tactics introduced the Viera and 12 continued the same Lore following up with 14. Female dominant, Males are really rare and all Vieras are hostile to any non Viera in their home territory. Viera Females have the Law the "Green Word" (Forest) but some Females exile abandoning this law to explore the world instead. Viera tribes are very territorial and isolated from society which is why we're never gonna see their home in the Source.

I'll be super surprised if SE even adds males.

1.0 Male miqotes were rare, but 2.0 game is pretty much a game reboot allowing to retcon the lore.

[Cidel]

I searched it up.

Ricedigital...Another site wrote...Yet another site:...

Those are all well and good, but basically all just essentially parrot the same fact that we already established: that Yoshida mostly held back saying anything about their plans and to just wait for the next upcoming fanfest. I've already explained that it is PR on their part to keep them from spoiling their reveals saved for the Tokyo fanfest (in midst of the widely-known leak of Viera and "Ronso" up until that point). Were people expecting them to make all the big announcements at the Paris fanfest and leave the Tokyo fanfest with nothing? To me it just looks and sounds like people didn't hear the answer they wanted right then and there so therefore SE saving reveals for later makes them responsible for incorrect speculation?

And even still- I guess since we're sharing sources about it, here's the question and response from an actual interview he had with Game Watch where he said that hints (about male vieras' likliness) could be found in the Return to Ivalice's lore:

Q: The question everyone got the most excited for at yesterday's press Q&A was the male vieras. Since it's you, Yoshida, we think there'll be male vieras. But in FFXII, male vieras are extremely rare and never appear. How are you going to introduce them into FFXIV?

A: Who knows? I'm a contrarian, so when you say "Yoshida would definitely do this", it makes me not want to answer *laughs* Actually, in the Return to Ivalice story that concluded the other day, there's a ton of lore about vieras in FFXIV. We coordinated with Matsuno-san to include most of the hints there, so please check that. Matsuno-san wrote wonderful texts for us.

https://game.watch.impress.co.jp/doc...w/1167942.html

And people subsequently did read the lore provided up until that point on Vieras from the Ivalice lore NPC. And they found that the males were thus far written to be so reclusive and avoidant of contact that even going searching for one would end in disappointment. The NPC adds at the end that he's never seen let alone heard of one living in the city (Desert Sapphire). "They simply don't exist to us." There was much implying that there would be no male Viera from that lore alone. Push back on lore all you want. I'm not even here to convince anybody that it's why they can never do it (they've already talked about it once the reveals were done). That was Yoshida's "hint" (and hence why I said letting people down gently) to people who could not simply wait til the next fanfest to see what was the male answer to Vieras. It doesn't matter how little lore matters; in this context, that was their excuse as to why you wouldn't see one on 5.0's release. But people didn't care. They continued to grasp at straws and personal theories and it took the actual reveal of Hrothgar to drive that home.

I managed to find the interview. It was from 2013.

Q38: In terms of new races, what kind of races are you looking into and will mixed races be introduced?

A38: I don’t think we’ll have mixed races for a while. Since it seems like Viera is popular around the world we have been proactively looking into this, but since having a rabbit male might be kind of weird, maybe we’ll look into having a separate race for the male counterpart.

Source: https://www.siliconera.com/square-ta...baby-behemoth/

Kinda glad to see this dug up as well. It sort of set-up the precedent for Viera and Hrothgar all the way back when, so the claim that their decision to do what they did wasn't completely out of nowhere nor was it not foreshadowed.

[KDSilver]

Both rabbit males and males in the bunny outfit are kind of weird, so I do agree with Yoshida here.

What's weird ?
That's a race that mixes animal + human attributes, a hybrid race such as miqote.

I think what makes it weird for people is because bunny girl have always been seen through the prism of sexyness/sensuality/sexuality to appeal men, just like catgirl (and the overly cutness for them), especially in the pop culture.
But once you forget about this, they're just hybrid races, bunnies and that's all which is not more weird that any other hybrids.

Miqote used to be gender locked as well, probably because of the cliché I mentionned (and as their counterpart, big muscled man with Roe). Yet, players raised their voice because they wanted to stay away from that prism and just play other type of races for variety.
Besides, male viera exists. They're hidden "because of the lore". But all know why the "lore" hide them.

[zeylos]

What's weird ?
That's a race that mixes animal + human attributes, a hybrid race such as miqote.

I think what makes it weird for people is because bunny girl have always been seen through the prism of sexyness/sensuality/sexuality to appeal men, just like catgirl (and the overly cutness for them), especially in the pop culture.
But once you forget about this, they're just hybrid races, bunnies and that's all which is not more weird that any other hybrids.

Miqote used to be gender locked as well, probably because of the cliché I mentionned (and as their counterpart, big muscled man with Roe). Yet, players raised their voice because they wanted to stay away from that prism and just play other type of races for variety.
Besides, male viera exists. They're hidden "because of the lore". But all know why the "lore" hide them.

I have never understood what do people find weird about male bunnies, like just what is the reason? Its just an animal feature on a human.

[Alleo]

To be expected, threats are usually fake outs or fear mongering on the internet.

Viera have always been around 80/20 female dominant species among other FF games, 12, and Tactics while the Male are extremely rare and very hostile to anyone that isn't them, as we know SE sticks to that system for 14.

Hm sounds a lot like our male kittens and yet here we are able to play them. How very strange right?

Those are all well and good, but basically all just essentially parrot the same fact that we already established: that Yoshida mostly held back saying anything about their plans and to just wait for the next upcoming fanfest.

And the whole discussion that even started the search for quotes was that maybe they should just be truthful to us. That maybe they should have done it differently. That even now they should come out and state it. Not some "maybes". Would it have hurt at that time? Probably, it would never not hurt. But at least you could say: See we can trust them because they even tell us the uncomfortable stuff and in a world where so many gaming companies get away with outright lieing or hiding information it would be a breath of fresh air.

Also the lore states that male viera exists and the WoL is always special no matter what. Then they say that Viera will be the last race...why should people not believe that we would get the males? Especially after them lifting certain restrictions with ARR.