Gender locked race?

[Ramesses]

100 PAGES !!!!

...Right???

Magnificent milestone indeed.

Now at page 102 and counting...

[redcurrant18]

Watch another 100+ page thread pop up if for some awful reason they do go through with gender locked races. Decisions like these just don't sit well with people and it honestly does feel like we're getting half of what we want. One thing is if they'd announce things and were open about what we should expect, but leaving us hanging like this has brought out all sorts of problems. Tbh if males are going to be a thing, they should have waited to reveal both genders in Japan instead of just females in Europe. I would have much rather heard more about what's coming in later patches or updates to jobs, but instead they've thrown all of us on a wild goose chase that won't end until they finally confirm something.

[Gemina]

I wouldn't worry about there not being a male Veira due to lore reasons. If this was truly the case, we wouldn't have playable male Miqo'te. Even if for some reason they are not around upon 5.0 release, they will be soon after.

What gets me is why wait until Japanfest to unveil them and leaving us all to speculate? Especially if they are indeed planning to implement them into FFXIV. Even if they don't have playable avatars to showcase, they can show concept art and talk about how they will be around despite the lore.

Also, why keep developing lore that makes it difficult to bring in a certain gender for a particular race? Just stop it already. I grow pretty tired of males and females working against each other instead of together. Both inside and outside gaming.

[Lauront]

The statements are from 2013, so before the lead up to HW, which is when the art came about, which would place it around 2015 (probably conceived before then.)

It's a question of whether he's aware of the anticipation around this and dragging it out for that reason, or whether they genuinely are working on a male-only race. I don't take the leaks to be definitive on this, as that leak was the last one and also the most ambiguous.

[Shippuu]

And now we have Dancer which is pretty feminine unless the style of dancing differs between male and females.

While it's not unreasonable that they might do different animations between the genders for dancers (after all, all the classes have different battle poses and victory pose emotes depending on gender). I think the more likely option is that they would opt for a flavor of dancer that is more gender neutral, one that isn't overly feminine or masculine.

I hope they add more customisation rather than different skin tone, but that would be too much to ask for since Au'ra are pretty much in the same boat. Different skin tones/scale/horn colouration.

Most sub clans are mostly differentiated by skin tones, Hyur and Lalafell being the exceptions. Outside of that I wouldn't expect too much to differentiate viera outside of minor details like facial tattoos/markings.

[Shougun]

Having not really been deep into Viera lore myself I went to check out old stuff and I thought it might be worth knowing, at least for those who were in a position more like my own, that Veena and Rava are not new concepts.. such that unless SE goes out of their way to make them more different than they have been in the past we can look at old FF games and already tell that veena and rava are pretty much skin color shifts.

The Viera (ヴィエラ Viera) are a rabbit-like race that can live three times as long as a Hume, and divided into two subraces: The light-skinned Veena and dark-skinned Rava. The Viera have rabbit or deer-like features, most notably their long ears. Their feet are shaped in such a way that in order to stand they must wear high heels. Their slender forms heighten their senses and speed, and although their defense is low, Viera agility and finesse are unmatched by the other races. In Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Vieras have blue-white, pale green, or purple-white hair, with only a few having hair that is pure white, which is considered to be a blessing. Viera can listen to the surrounding nature and sense Mist, and can sometimes go berserk from feeling an overwhelmingly vast quantity of active Mist. In Final Fantasy XII, they live in hidden villages deep within the vast forests of Ivalice. The Viera believe themselves to be intimately tied to the "Wood", a part of the forests themselves, and are rarely involved in matters outside the wood. A Viera that moves out of the forest, like Fran, is considered an outcast and dead to her people. Mixed breeds of Veena and Rava Viera have accustomed themselves to coexist within Hume society, dyeing their white hair.

Sounds pretty much like what we have in FFXIV, but the above was written in 2006. (source: Final Fantasy XII Scenario Ultimania)

I still personally prefer when the clans are very different though (hyur like), because .. more options, but the above might give a heavier lean to same shapes different colors.

[Kupocoubo]

Having not really been deep into Viera lore myself I went to check out old stuff and I thought it might be worth knowing, at least for those who were in a position more like my own, that Veena and Rava are not new concepts.. such that unless SE goes out of their way to make them more different than they have been in the past we can look at old FF games and already tell that veena and rava are pretty much skin color shifts.



Sounds pretty much like what we have in FFXIV, but the above was written in 2006. (source: Final Fantasy XII Scenario Ultimania)

I still personally prefer when the clans are very different though (hyur like), because .. more options, but the above might give a heavier lean to same shapes different colors.

Then the two sub races would be present in the trailer (there are dark Vieras and pale Vieras in it), which is possible but would be disapointing IMO
I wonder if three sub races for Vieras could be possible

[Metsonm]

Surely they must realise that adding a new, male-only race will be the worst option. If they just come out and say "No male Viera" then the forums will be awash with people clamouring for them to be added.

If they go "No male Viera...BUT...we are adding a male-only race of Ronso" or whatever it'll be, then the forums will instead be filled with us asking for male viera and female Ronso.

It's just going to be doubling the workload down the line, or enduring twice the shouting from fans than just a pure male viera situation.

[redcurrant18]

My citation is that in no way, shape, or form, will it ever be believable for there not to be a single male Viera somewhere in the zone when typically this is how big they are making them.




And best believe they'll only get bigger. No male Viera in FF12? Half the jungle is blocked off by magic barriers so of course no one ever saw them. Fran obviously never had any reason to seek them out, so the only place it made sense to go was the female's village.

[Hunky]

The dramaturge does state that the two Viera clans are Rava and Veena, so it's all but confirmed that these will be the two clans. And from what we've seen, we can expect them to be palette swaps of each other with a few minor differences; this is the case for most of the current playable races. And it's important to remember that Rava and Veena are not new concepts. The idea of Rava and Veena has been around for years. Although admittedly, I am not familiar with the specific lore for Rava and Veena.



If there is going to be a "young-Elezen looking" variant, as Namae stated, how will they be implemented? Will the short variants be one of the aforementioned clans, or will they be treated as a separate race, the way Feol is treated separately from Viera? Maybe the short variants are supposed to be a stand-in for Feol.

The short variants we see in the concept art do share some visual similarities with Feol, such as shorter ears and smaller stature. In a way, we'd be able to play as Feol, but with another name. To quote Shakespeare again, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." This might lead us to something like this.




Unless both Rava and Veena are of the tall variant, and they create another race for shorter Viera. But this seems extremely unlikely. I doubt this will happen. If the tall and short variants are treated as separate races, and not just clans, that means there will be a total of four new clans, instead of just two. My guess is that the tall and short variants will be divided into Rava and Veena, respectively.

But this is assuming that we will even get playable short Viera.

The wandering dramaturge didn't mention any other differences between Rava and Veena other than skin tone. So this could all be ruled out. And we might be reading too much into Namae's comment of a "young-Elezen looking" variant. Perhaps she was just referring to hairstyles or facial shapes. But then again, Yoshida and the others seemed quick to tell her to not talk more about it. It seems there is more left to reveal about Viera.

The only thing we know for sure is that we are getting the tall variant of female Viera, which is the category Fran falls into. They have similar builds as female Elezen: relatively broad shoulders, long necks, and long limbs. To compare, I posted some pics of my female Elezen alt.





It seems that these female Viera will be around the same height as female Elezen. To get an idea of how tall they may be, here is my max-height Elezen main standing next to Fran. I also took pictures of him standing next to the company belle, the wandering dramaturge's wife (does Matsuno like tall girls?)




I'm not sure where Fran is on the height scale. She could be max, average, or minimum height. But either way, these female Viera are going to be tall. They're definitely going to be taller than the petit catgirls and dragongirls that dominate the current population. And that's something I do appreciate.

I just wish that whatever we get for males is an actual equivalent to the female Viera we see now. I'm going to be so disappointed if they go with a conventionally attractive female race, and a beast-like male race.