Gender locked race?

[Karl0217]

There's that inflated notion that adding one pair of genderlocked races will somehow majorly damage the game in the west. You people are delusional at this point, I swear.

Gender-locked races definitely damaged the 1.0 version of the game enough that one of the first things Yoshida did after taking over the project was remove them. Or have you forgotten that?

[Shippuu]

Gender-locked races definitely damaged the 1.0 version of the game enough that one of the first things Yoshida did after taking over the project was remove them. Or have you forgotten that?

You'd be absolutely hard pressed to back that claim up with any actual hard evidence. The genderlocks in 1.0 were FAR from anywhere near the myriad of issues that plagued that game.

[Taykawai]

Out of curiosity would you stay subbed or resub if it was either mentioned to be added later or was?

Lets say your worst case scenario they make two genderlocked races giving whatever reason they give, if it was said to be happening later or did happen later = continue sub/resub?

Absolutly. But if they chose to remain silent after the revel of gender locked races it's a bye bye. It's not a matter if you care or care not about playing male viera or other race, to me its about constrain player options and further limit in game freedom. I can choose my name, i can choose my class, why can't i choose my gender?

[Shougun]

Absolutly. But if they chose to remain silent after the revel of gender locked races it's a bye bye. It's not a matter if you care or care not about playing male viera or other race, to me its about constrain player options and further limit in game freedom. I can chose my name, i can chose my class, why can't i chose my gender?

, was interested - thanks for answering~

I am not a huge fan of gender lock.. It could be sold to me but it'd have to be sold well.. For example if I brought up a race with a virus that's destroying all the females of the population, THEN I also said I'm going to let you play that race. Would make sense you don't get to play the gender that's going to die in a month or less XD. Or another example I'd accept is the Asari from Mass Effect, where they don't really have a male gender and just sort of mesh with the others. Alternatively maybe I'd think about making a genderless race, but even if they had a type (generally male like or female like) I'd probably work on adding some androgynous options then like a Kuja or Zidane from FFIX (especially Kuja lol).

The problem for me is Viera wasn't introduced in an order that really gets me lining up with the above sort of logic. It helps for me that I started with zero interest to be male Viera so its not a huge loss to me personally as a FFXIV player but I can emulate the idea of being upset if I had interest in it (and the annoyance if it was locked when there doesn't seem to be a good reason anywhere why).

IF they do lock it I imagine it will have to do with jump rope budget and trying to get a leaking WoW ship, or budget jump rope with indecision on two races the team really loves (not great to be so split as a team but I can see it happening), or that one or both devs have some REALLY strong opinons on male Viera XD. Jump rope budget I just made up but = you've got so much resources and you can't do all the things lol.

If it's just jump rope budget then I feel fairly confident they'll be unlocked in the future. I get why some people might feel "passed up" if SE was trying to get a part of the market of a leaking ship that they might not have interested enough before (those who play undead, troll, tauren, draenai, etc) but at the same time I can see from a business perspective trying to weigh out new blood old blood and maximizing both. If I was playing that game, which I am not qualified to play (arm chair comments here lol), I'd be sure to let people know male Viera will be coming and the feedback on how they wanted it to appear will be accounted for.

Now if the reason is strong opinions against (say the creator Matsuno or Yoshi-P put their foot down).. well then.. .... just well.. lol.

Alternatively the lion-like leak race is a lie and you get both genders of Viera and thats it, or we get two full races with both genders. It's still possible, although seems very "no..no way.. no really? wow?!! 1!!" haha.

[Gwenorai]

I keep seeing these arguments regarding the original games and how the males weren't shown, and I'm just okay. These things are pretty easy to explain away. If Matsuno didn't like the idea of a male Viera he wouldn't have created the lore to have them in the first place. This kind of thinking where oh 'well they didn't add them into the game = well the creator doesn't like them' is silly.

You know what else we didn't see in that game?

• -Female Rev
• -Female Garif
• -Female Ronso (for the most part)
• -Female Banga that could be distinguished from the males - cost efficient to have them use the same models.

In regards to the first two, we know they exist - they're in the lore. Rev got completed shafted, however. In regards to female Ronso, we see, like what? Two? And they were only added so there could be some diversity into the blitzball team.

Does the creator hate those races as well? Or maybe because there's no point into adding a model into a game that isn't going to have any use at all. There is no point adding something into the game that doesn't need to be added if it has little to no consequence to the main story. It's a waste of money, time and space.

Furthermore, the lore for Viera was expanded recently regarding FF14. Tactics they just had the females; yet again, makes sense - what's the point adding in another model just for the sake of it? Heck, the lore in that game also falsely identifies them as 'female only' - they could have followed that lore instead if they wished.

In fact in tactics the Viera race was dead and we were in a 'dream world'. In the second one, they returned and were alive, though as someone stated; could easily have been the fact the males hadn't returned yet from that purgatory - or returned to a different place.

A reminder as well that these were released back in the 90s, where sex appeal was big. Still is, but it was more common back then. Does anyone remember the early Tomb Raider games? Or how big Tifa's chest was/is?

And before we get to the argument of; but the male Viera is useless for ShadowBringers - we won't need them. Considering where we're going, what the plot might give us and the times that the WoD is living in, well... We don't have a Fran to escort us through the woods this time.

I'm happy that there's just so much lore on the males after so long of near nothing. I'm glad they expanded upon that, I hope they did it for a reason that is beyond that of - lore reason why genderlocks exist.

[WhiteArchmage]

In fact in tactics the Viera race was dead and we were in a 'dream world'. In the second one, they returned and were alive, though as someone stated; could easily have been the fact the males hadn't returned yet from that purgatory - or returned to a different place.

Swear to gods I have to repeat this every so often. Tactics = Every non-hume race is dead or way deeper in hiding (there is a theory somewhere that the Viera became one with the woods and became the female-looking Treants in Tactics). Tactics Advance: Dream Ivalice. Tactics A2 = Real Ivalice with Dimension Hopping/Time Travel Shenaningans, technically not Ivalice but the continent of Jylland.

Ivalice is my favorite FF setting, and Tactics my favorite FF, I tend to get irked when people confuse or conflate the first one with the Advance one

[Shougun]

I keep seeing these arguments regarding the original games and how the males weren't shown, and I'm just okay. These things are pretty easy to explain away. If Matsuno didn't like the idea of a male Viera he wouldn't have created the lore to have them in the first place. This kind of thinking where oh 'well they didn't add them into the game = well the creator doesn't like them' is silly.

Eeeh... I can see why it's hard for some to believe- especially as your desire would want you to disbelieve it possibly.. but honestly you could also easily explain away why male viera are vaguely mentioned too in context of "I don't really want them".

The first step of the problem is probably not being in the mindset of genderlocking is okay, which clearly SE was at least (XI/XIV). I would say it's safe to assume others who have worked at SE in the past could have been too (maybe not all, but not some legendary rarity only at high levels of their MMOs). Also comparing to other Asian games... seems likely to be a thing.

Imo its clear female Viera's visuals at minimum were picked for their sex appeal, in fact they're so out there that if it wasn't for the fact they're from SE themselves I'm fairly certain I'd get in trouble for posting too many photos of them lol. Put the FFXIV version in their race outfit in a few risque poses within the game and you have yourself a cover to some adult content sold in Japan .

Now what's a good way to kill that sort of fan service/playing to sex appeal? Make them incapable of what people see in them.. SO imo in this idea, and accepting that genderlocking isn't bizarre to some people there, /of course/ the male viera are mentioned and of course they're only vaguely so. Male viera are only a backdrop that paints an image, and oh my are the male viera literally just a tiny footnote in the series lol.

So I think if you tried to shift your perspective to someone who doesn't think such fanservice and such locking isn't so weird that that your statement "they wouldn't have created the lore if they didn't like them" becomes /possibly/ untrue. I'm not saying it's for sure, but I think if you shifted your view of things (which one must if we're trying to imagine changing our shoes to someone else) that it's actually possible that male viera's existence in the series is a little blob of ink to better paint female viera exclusively and all that matters is the females.

Could be untrue of course but I'm just saying you think they're easy to explain away and I'm saying it's true both ways, unfortunately :P.

[Iscah]

The thing is we have already seen them change these statements with the Au Ra; because French language rules dictate gender-neutral terms because of their name starting with an A. So we have seen how this coding works when there is only one gender option.

I don't think that means that they actually share the *programming* of the pronoun - it would just mean that the same pronoun is put into the male Au Ra and female Au Ra text.

Wracking my head trying to figure out how on earth they could possibly justify having no male Viera being visible. I doubt a single forest fire would be enough to kill them off, regardless of whether or not it was caused by Garleans. They couldn't be killed by Black Rose either, since if that were the case it would not only kill them but the entire female Viera village and the Nu Mou as well.

If they're going to be unseen, then I think it's simple enough that they just actively avoid us. Maybe we'll have a female Viera accompanying us, or maybe word can somehow be passed to them that we're allowed to be there, and they'll let us travel safely through the forest and just never come into contact with us.

The who now?

Our boy is becoming the WoD.

Who says we aren't still being the Warrior of Light as well?

Because not everyone does raids. If you don't do the Coils of Bahamut they retcon the MSQ for you. The lore around this kind of side content is subject to change. If you haven't done Return to Ivalice, Fran will probably be introduced in a completely different way if they decide to make her relevant in Shadowbringers, and any Viera lore about them keeping to the forest will probably be thrown out the window.

There's a difference between retconning the sequence of events (eg. pretending the Binding Coil didn't happen yet) and actually "throwing out" lore that you skipped. Ignoring the Coils doesn't change the facts about what's there. Ignoring the Ivalice raid doesn't mean that the lore established there doesn't apply to the rest of the game.

Au Ra is a beast race like lalafell is tall >.> lol. Ronso, Charr, Lupis, Pantera.. things like that are beast race (alibet Lupis and Pantera have strong humandoid features, but still fairly beastly more so than Au Ra and Miqote imo).

Also I came up with, imo, the:
Beast Race Test

Au Ra is a beast(like) race by this game's limited space in which to design races that are distinguishable as "men" rather than "beastmen". So yeah, your Beast Race Test is probably a fair gauge of that, but it's also why it's unlikely we'll get any races that pass it. Who knows whether they would be more bold with the designs if they hadn't written themselves into a corner back in ARR?

[Lauront]

Who says we aren't still being the Warrior of Light as well?

Maybe, maybe not. All that we do know is that the transition to WoD will certainly be coming into play.

[Lauront]

Female monstrosities outside of the trials exist, but like I said, you won't always be able to tell if they're even female, because they lack many of the secondary female traits that human women have. Certainly, female dragons are monstrous beings by human standards.

Titan may not be the most monstrous but he's certainly one of the ugliest trial bosses.

The Devs have a clear direction with how they like things and its only going to be through continued constructive feedback that they may attempt to go outside their comfort zone like more monstrous females and bunny men i would love more options for everyone but it needs to be in a way that is not too aggressive

You'll have an uphill battle with that, because it'd require showing some tangible benefit to the game of doing so, like increased profitability. I doubt it's something that most players are even remotely concerned about. At least with male Viera, as it relates to a playable race option, you will manage to garner some sympathy.