The Men FFXIV Needs

[Absurdity]

Honestly, I feel like they need to work on the actual face-sculpts, as well. The male viera are a dozen steps above the other races in terms of how well-sculpted their faces look in comparison.
It's even jarring compared to female viera, which are also a step above other races. I'd love for them to set aside some dev resources to re-sculpt all the face options (obviously don't change their actual appearances!).

Otherwise if they don't re-sculpt the faces, imagine them adding fresh facial options to the older races, with the quality of male viera. It would look... really odd.

It's not just the face model but also the textures. They just look like they're higher quality compared to the original races despite being the same resolution. Best example would be female Viera and female Highlanders, both have the same texture resolution but while Viera look clean you can count the pixels on female Highlander faces. Maybe they had access to compression with less loss in image quality for Viera, who knows.

[Theodric]

Miqo'te men literally look more masculine than male viera. It's so sad. Such great masculine concepts too..

Aye. At least they didn't embrace some of the creepier suggestions to have male viera resemble children.

[Senn]

I'll always support requests for more character customization, and that includes requests for masculine options. I think highlanders need better face options as well as eyebrows, better facial hair options, etc...
That being said, I'm glad the graphics team didn't go down the super masculine route for male viera. A few people were requesting something like that in the male viera thread, but in my opinion, it's good that was largely ignored in favor of a more elegant and slender type of character model. The male's min/max height being shorter than the female's min/max height was a pleasant surprise.

[leanansi]

I'll always support requests for more character customization, and that includes requests for masculine options. I think highlanders need better face options as well as eyebrows, better facial hair options, etc...
That being said, I'm glad the graphics team didn't go down the super masculine route for male viera. A few people were requesting something like that in the male viera thread, but in my opinion, it's good that was largely ignored in favor of a more elegant and slender type of character model. The male's min/max height being shorter than the female's min/max height was a pleasant surprise.

I play male viera and I'm really happy with the route they chose. It's much more unique that just another very masculine males/very feminine female combo, like almost every fantasy game does with every race. I'm not necessarily against the more advanced sliders some people have suggested to let people have more options for body types, etc, across all races but I think having male viera canonically more slender with softer features is artistically more unique and interesting than going the expected route of extreme sexual dimorphism that I typically expect from video games races. They're not even what anyone would reasonably call androgynous, imo. Their bodies are more masculine/muscular than most men in real life. Some people just have very high bars for "masculinity" in games.

[SturmChurro]

Well, it's like Lauront was saying, they didn't even do a "dad" face, like male miqo'te, and pretty much every other male race in the game has. It would have at least been a nice singular option for players who wanted that more masculine face for male viera. Like Theodric was saying, some players wanted a more extreme version of male viera than we received. I know, generally, a lot of players wanted them more feminine or androgynous, and shorter, shorter than minimum height male miqo'te. So SE did compromise a little bit.

[Senn]

I play male viera and I'm really happy with the route they chose. It's much more unique that just another very masculine males/very feminine female combo, like almost every fantasy game does with every race. I'm not necessarily against the more advanced sliders some people have suggested to let people have more options for body types, etc, across all races but I think having male viera canonically more slender with softer features is artistically more unique and interesting than going the expected route of extreme sexual dimorphism that I typically expect from video games races. They're not even what anyone would reasonably call androgynous, imo. Their bodies are more masculine/muscular than most men in real life. Some people just have very high bars for "masculinity" in games.

I agree that it's definitely much more unique than the standard masculine look for men. And not only is it unique, but I think they look great, too. Male viera definitely give off that bishounen aesthetic or k-pop style that's popular nowadays and I wouldn't want them any other way. It just fits so well.
And I'm with you on the sliders. I don't think we'll ever get them, but I'd love to have them nonetheless. However, I do recall an interview with Yoshi P stating that rather than adding options to change the shape of a character model's body, they would rather just add a new race entirely.

[aveyond-dreams]

The simple fact of the matter is that prior to the introduction to male Viera, there was no model that satisfied the fantasy feel of a sort of high elf male. Male Elezen, for numerous reasons, were not delivering on this front. However rather than update the widely controversial model for male Elezen (and by extent female Eezen), they chose to transpose that fantasy onto male Viera.

The ideal scenario would have been to implement the improved body type for male Viera to Elezen and gone with a look that sits somewhere between Elezen and Au Ra for male Viera, but that did not occur. I love what we got in them because I can finally play a decent wood elf but when it comes to traditional masculine aesthetics, the game does not provide sufficient options. It would have been nice to see things like facial hair or even the reuse of the highlander build in male Viera, but short of petitioning for another race addition the only thing we can hope for is that these older models are one day revisited.

[ronibosch]

Aye. At least they didn't embrace some of the creepier suggestions to have male viera resemble children.

Yikes! Good on the creative team for not going down that route.

On that note, I do like the height difference male Viera have compared to female Viera. I think rabbits in real life are like that, with a female rabbit being larger on average than a male rabbit of the same breed.

Still, that doesn't mean male Viera can't be manly, of course. There are plenty of short, manly kings out there.

EDIT: Also, I know that male Viera's height range isn't necessarily "short", but I know how a good chunk of people wish they were taller.

[leanansi]

I'm not entirely convinced that Viera need to be more masculine at all. Does every race need to be able to span both extremes? On one hand, if you can make massively ripped, bearded, chiseled jaw Viera men and slight, soft featured, pretty boy roes then that's a wide variety of character creator options and you are allowed a greater amount of creative freedoms. On the other hand, it strips away everything that makes the races unique from each other. It's really down to whether individually unique races or the full span of creative freedoms when creating your character is more important. I don't think Viera specifically need to be made more masculine when there are plenty of other masculine races that aren't being made more feminine, though. It's not really about "variety" at that point, but just wanting every male race to be very masculine. I support ideas like adding the notorious eyebrows so people will be happier with the masculine options available, but I don't think everything needs to be hyper-masculine. Viera add variety and are a unique race in themselves. I don't think they really need to look like every other male character in video games.

[ronibosch]

I'm not entirely convinced that Viera need to be more masculine at all. Does every race need to be able to span both extremes? On one hand, if you can make massively ripped, bearded, chiseled jaw Viera men and slight, soft featured, pretty boy roes then that's a wide variety of character creator options and you are allowed a greater amount of creative freedoms. On the other hand, it strips away everything that makes the races unique from each other. It's really down to whether individually unique races or the full span of creative freedoms when creating your character is more important. I don't think Viera specifically need to be made more masculine when there are plenty of other masculine races that aren't being made more feminine, though. It's not really about "variety" at that point, but just wanting every male race to be very masculine. I support ideas like adding the notorious eyebrows so people will be happier with the masculine options available, but I don't think everything needs to be hyper-masculine. Viera add variety and are a unique race in themselves. I don't think they really need to look like every other male character in video games.

Honestly, a lot of the concerns addressed here could be easily fixed with a few tweaks in customization, namely a muscle tone slider (for both genders and all races) and more/better facial hair options.