Gender locked race?

[Shippuu]

It's pretty hilarious to me that people are still working under the impression that we're getting two "separate but equal" genderlocked races. The existing 1.0 races were given the opposite gender with ARR, they've gone to lengths to remove genderlocks on clothing items, and to top it all off, the top contender for the male only race being ronso makes LESS sense than male viera being playable.

Gtfoh with all this stretching to justify anything but bunnyboys.

I mean it's not really a stretch when the director of the game (you know, the guy who makes the final decisions on what makes it into this game) straight up said he'd potentially do a male only race counterpart specifically counter to viera and it was after they had already decided on pretty much finished development of fixing the gender locks of 1.0.

Combined with every other factor such as a lack of actually announcing them and lore tailored to explain their overall lack of a presence it's absolutely not a stretch in the slightest, but a genuine possibility.

But you can ignore all the evidence to your heart's content. I pray you will eat crow gracefully if you turn out to be wrong (but I somehow doubt it.)

[NekoNova]

I just want to contribute one thing to the entire discussion:

[Corue]

I just want to contribute one thing to the entire discussion:

The same lore that states that there are proportionally more male Viera than there are male Miqo'te?

[Gwenorai]

I actually went back and checked the leakers' comments; pretty much all of them. If I missed a few, please feel free to show me - I spent way too much time in Pastebin and GameFaqs reading his comments and it's a possibility I missed - anyway; I didn't once see him mention there was a gender lock. Yes, this was me reading the comments and again, people are free to correct me. All I saw was that the guy mentioned Viera was the new race multiple of times - I saw nothing about a gender lock. The comment regarding Ronso was just speculation that he debunked by saying 'close' - so it's not Ronso at all if this guy is to be believed. If someone says 'close' they mean there's a similarity but it's not it. If I'm thinking of an animal and it's a 'Horse' and you're guessing the animal and say it's a 'Donkey' - and I go 'Close', you don't jump the gun and say 'Oh, it's a Donkey!' my statement of 'Close' literally means, no but you're on the right track.

A few months after he returned and said yet again it was Viera - still no mention of a gender lock - he mentioned there was a new race; he didn't mention it was playable. But let's assume that it is playable and it's the lion that is 'close to Ronso' but isn't. If it's not Ronso then it's either, a completely new race or a Rev - OR the guy has mistaken a Male Viera that looked like a lion in regards to the whole 'Lionhead' rabbit. Which is certainly possible that he didn't even see images and it was just text. This guy has been rumoured to be part of the local translation team - someone who puts text into the game. He could have easily been going off of descriptions and not images.


If he was just going off text and all that; all he could have done is literally seen that Fran was in the new 24man - and a logical guess would jump to the fact that Viera would be added in as a new Race.

He never said playable race, he just said 'New Race' and when questioned about the other race he didn't want to spoil the story. This guy already just spoilt a huge portion of the story/savage content/events - I don't understand how all of a sudden speaking about the 'lion' is too far.

Again, I would appreciate it if someone could correct me with quotes etc if this is incorrect!

[Shippuu]

The leaker never talked about gender locking, but he never confirmed male viera either. Just said viera are coming. Considering viera have only always been depicted by females of the race, it's easy that if you see a female viera it's confirmation viera are coming.

Th gender locking comes into the logistics of developing a new race. It takes a lot of work to make a full blown race, all the art assets with around 7 new hairstyles etc. Adjusting equipment to fit them, and the huge amount of emotes that need to he created for them (and all the other animations rigged to their skeleton).

So when comments leaking of there potentially being a second race, realistically having two full blown male and female races is highly unlikely. That is a TON of work. Yet creating 1 male only race, and one female only race is the more logical option. (This is also why having two very distinct different sub races is also very unlikely because it's just as much work as doing a second race. There are shortcuts such as sharing emotes they could take but it's still a lot of new assets to create, they would be less separate than Hyur differences for example).

Once those are taken into consideration, there's a history of evidence old and current that paint a picture that genderlocked races may indeed be coming. From old comments straight from the director saying he would do exactly that (specifically with viera as well), with new lore setting up to explain why male viera may not be around in any meaningful way, to doing a full race reveal with no mention of male viera coming, even if they were still a work in progress. To then being coy and vague when asked directly about it in interviews, even saying that he sees himself as a contrarian when an interviewer said they expected him to give male viera.

All these things start to add that the obvious thing of implementing male viera may not happen.

[Gwenorai]

-

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.


---
So that's what was said of course; I'll try and explain my take from this. To me, regarding the contrarian part he's saying that he doesn't like it when people say that because then when he answers and it's the wrong answer people get extremely upset because they expected it.

This makes a lot of sense; I hate assumptions myself. While it could be taken as him avoiding the answer and just going - I don't want to answer this because you won't like what I say. It's also extremely sly and could just come off as a comment regarding people assuming and not actually fully linked into the question.

Now this part when he says 'Actually, in return of Ivalice...' this is him actually answering the question which he links back to the lore given to us by the Dramaturge in regarding Viera - specifically male Viera. The lore does indeed say they're rare and that the dramaturge has never seen a male, Viera. But he heavily talks about their way of life and how they are insanely protective of their people and the wood.

To me this isn't him writing them off, it's putting forward the fact we're going to the wood, we're going to get attacked by the males. Why do I think this? Because I think the fact he brought forward that the wood that was on fire was the Viera homeland is a huge hint. He didn't need to tell us that, he could just have us think it's just another woodland. We certainly didn't need to know it regarding the female Viera because they can be seen in the cities. No, this is the introduction to the male - or that's what I believe.

There is something big going on in the woods that will cause them to fight and thus give an introduction.

On the other hand, you could be completely right. The lore mixed with the fire could just be the idea that the males will all be killed and the those that aren't will just... what, flee? Continue fighting and we just not see them? Who knows, to me it opens up the possibilities.

But I certainly do see your side, there's a lot of evidence though circumstantial to both sides. I, however, from the other side of things can't imagine them not being there as it would be bad storytelling. In the end I just like to speculate.

[Senn]

The lore does indeed say they're rare and that the dramaturge has never seen a male, Viera. But he heavily talks about their way of life and how they are insanely protective of their people and the wood.

I was wondering why the lore kind of went out of its way to describe male viera in a bit more depth, especially about their appearance. I don't know whether to take it as a hint, or just world building. Then again, the lore said male viera may as well "not exist" to us.
The current information we have now and Yoshi P's comments on male viera in the past make me believe playable male viera are less likely to be added to the game. There could be some other clue we're not seeing.

[Bathroombard]

I'm really curious where the statement that Yoshi is against male viera is coming from. If someone could link me to where he's said that, I would appreciate it very much.

To clarify I'm talking about:

You're right in that player's personal aesthetic preferences don't matter, but do you know who's does? The director of the game's, who has consistently shown to be against the idea of male viera

[Gwenorai]

I'm really curious where the statement that Yoshi is against male viera is coming from. If someone could link me to where he's said that, I would appreciate it very much.

To clarify I'm talking about:

From what I recall he didn't want to make Male Viera because they would look 'odd' as in too cute, he doesn't like 'cute' male Viera. This, however, was before the Heavensward reveal of the Male Viera concept art. And his reasoning for not wanting to show the art was because he knew people would want the Viera and he liked the idea of Au'ra and wanted to continue with that.

Note; The Concept art of Male Viera in HW, wasn't cute, however; they were tall, manly and buff. If they were 'cute' and feminine I imagine he wouldn't have shown them at all.

[InkstainedGwyn]

I'm really curious where the statement that Yoshi is against male viera is coming from. If someone could link me to where he's said that, I would appreciate it very much.

To clarify I'm talking about:

Several articles were already linked where he spoke against wanting "cute" males, then said he thought they would be cute if at all.

Changes happen, of course. But they're there.

As for the "fire" changing the way of life for the Viera, I see that as how we might meet male Viera, but not play them? Any male Viera created will start at level 1 ARR time, which comes before this current content. And that would then not make sense. I'm not saying it means we won't get them, not at all. I see both sides (and am just a pessimist). But I don't think that is any sort of indication.