Gender locked race?

[Lauront]

And I have to disagree again. There are some things the playerbase cares about more than others. For an example of this, look to the BA feedback thread. Something that appeared minor to a lot of people got personally addressed by Yoshi and that was complaints about the additional story cutscenes of Eureka being locked behind BA. Yoshi even apologized for it in his post there and made a point to state he wouldn't to it again. Consider the fact that managed to get a response from Yoshi and consider how many more people are going to be upset by genderlocked viera.

How many people were invested enough in eureka's story to care about that cutscene? Enough to reach the dev leader apparently. Now imagine it over something even bigger than that, a brand new race. I don't know what else I can say to convince you this is a bigger deal than you think so you'll just have to wait and see.

There is a difference between things where they're fundamentally opposed to taking the game in a specific direction (e.g. BLU for the time being), and issues resulting from miscommunication (which Eureka falls under, mostly.) They won't necessarily treat all player demands on the same footing. They undid gender-locks in the past because they said they had underestimated how strongly desired the other gender option was for those races. However, if they're opposed out of reasons of principle (the gender/race combo does not fit their vision of the game), and consider that what they're instead proposing to do is add a male-only variant of another race as adequate to compensate for the lack of the opposite gender, you're dealing with a fundamentally different attitude.

At an extreme, unless this significantly hurt the game's profitability, I don't think they will back down, provided this is the underlying issue.

[Alesone]

Just like he's claiming we won't "believe" it's a big deal until it happens, I hope he's open to how if it does happen, he'll be wrong and it won't be anywhere near the issue he's claiming it will be. A cosmetic race choice is far from being anything of a major issue to this game, and it affects players just as much who would have rather had some other race than viera in the first place. The male Viera crowd feels like they've got a bit of an inflated sense of self worth if they think them not being catered to is a bigger issue than Eureka and Blue Mage.

[Lacan]

There is a difference between things where they're fundamentally opposed to taking the game in a specific direction (e.g. BLU for the time being), and issues resulting from miscommunication (which Eureka falls under, mostly.) They won't necessarily treat all player demands on the same footing. They undid gender-locks in the past because they said they had underestimated how strongly desired the other gender option was for those races. However, if they're opposed out of reasons of principle (the gender/race combo does not fit their vision of the game), and consider that what they're instead proposing to do is add a male-only variant of another race as adequate to compensate for the lack of the opposite gender, you're dealing with a fundamentally different attitude.

At an extreme, unless this significantly hurt the game's profitability, I don't think they will back down, provided this is the underlying issue.

If they didn't think male viera fit their vision of the game, they wouldn't have included them in the lore at all. They went out of their way to give us information about male viera from the dramaturge. We actually learned more about male viera there than we ever did in FF XII itself. They could have just as easily left the situation completely ambiguous and they didn't. If they were able to go all of XII without a single mention of them, I don't see why they even bothered to tell us about them in XIV if they knew we weren't ever going to be able to play as one.

[Lauront]

I personally don't put too much weight on the 2013 comments. I'm just going to play it by ear until Fanfest, without getting my hopes up one way or another.

Based on the panel at EU fanfest, it seemed sketches done by the art team are super early in the development cycle. Them having art I don't think necessarily means they were able to overcome their distaste of the idea of male Viera. For all we know, that art got to Yoshi and he just said nah, gross. Like we saw the same little bunny art at this past fanfest, but I don't see many people jumping for joy that it's indicative of a vastly different subrace.

Weren't those simply Viera children? You're right that they did seem to be very early in the cycle.

[cicatriz313]

Weren't those simply Viera children? You're right that they did seem to be very early in the cycle.

Possibly? I've seen most people assume they're the "feol" or whatever race. I think you're the first I've seen to assume children lol. Probably because children are pretty rare in this game.

[Lauront]

Possibly? I've seen most people assume they're the "feol" or whatever race. I think you're the first I've seen to assume children lol. Probably because children are pretty rare in this game.

No, I also assumed they were a subrace but someone pointed out they're probably just children, and tbh, it does fit. Feol weren't particularly child-like.

[Nestama]

Possibly? I've seen most people assume they're the "feol" or whatever race. I think you're the first I've seen to assume children lol. Probably because children are pretty rare in this game.

Which is just silly, since Feol Viera are most likely as tall as pure-blood Viera (their father race are likely as tall, if not, taller than the Hume in FFXII:RW). The only short thing about them is their ears.

[Duskane]

I only see complaints about Eureka and Blue mage on this forum mostly
but people asking about and for male viera is on just about everything ff14 related The facebook,twitter,many artist on pixv,tumblr etc etc

definitely depends how the thread plays out the day of tokyo fan fest and im sure there are many on this forum waiting to say there opinion when its confirmed locked or not

[Lauront]

The thing that perplexes me is more why he'd get the impression that they would need to be cute in the first place. Although I can see many who ask for Viera at the same time demand they fill some "soft, cute" niche, which is at odds with their lore description. Just not sure where this has ever been a major factor in any requests for Viera.

[artyport]

well i think elezen males do fit the beautiful/elegant trope
but people are just put off by there animations
but i think having another option would be fine

Usually eleven would fit but they are kinda weird visually in this game. They are more the nerdy /accountant race of ffxiv. Most of their faces are too angular to be beautiful and kinda look mean. And the cute face is uhhhh odd. I normally play elf races but viera seem to be ffxiv beautiful race... so it’s sad we won’t get males... but we will probably get a 3rd masculine macho buff guy option