Gender locked race?

[Gwenorai]

Of course; I still think it would be extremely shoddy writing if they weren't in game however due to the very nature of Male Viera and their wood. How would they go around the fact the only few males that are around live in that specific wood? I already made an earlier post regarding their number based on a population of three million people being in Ivalice, with 5% Viera population with 8:2 female to male ratio + 75% of the males being culled due to strict lifestyle and that was STILL 7500. That's a big number for a race that will be concentrated in that very wood, who shoot trespassers on sight because outsiders in their wood is like a heinous crime.

How would we, the WoL and our party manage to get through the wood without being attacked by one? And yes they attack from the shadows, but this is the WoL/WoD they're not going to go down with one shot which will end up with a confrontation.

Not to mention their wood - which Yoshi P mentioned - was burning in the trailer. Another reason for them to come out and fight or help with the blaze. It honestly just doesn't make sense to me at the minimal for there not to be a male viera NPC.

I just can't wrap my head around it.
'Oh yeah, all the males are in this wood and shoot outsiders on sight. But you the WoL/WoD won't see any of them during this epic battle between you and the Empire while in the woodland. You'll just have to deal with flavour text that tells you they're doing something - maybe have some bodies randomly show up with arrows in them or something - yeah, yeah - let's do that. Can't show any 'awkward' Bunnymen.'

10/10 shoddy writing.

[Shippuu]

How would we, the WoL and our party manage to get through the wood without being attacked by one? And yes they attack from the shadows, but this is the WoL/WoD they're not going to go down with one shot which will end up with a confrontation.

Not to mention their wood - which Yoshi P mentioned - was burning in the trailer. Another reason for them to come out and fight or help with the blaze. It honestly just doesn't make sense to me at the minimal for there not to be a male viera NPC.

I don't think you're considering a potential story element they could be using with that particular burning wood. Male Viera are already very rare and staunch defenders of the wood. If a significant threat were to approach the woods, it would make sense for them to gather to defend it, no? And if that so happens to gather the majority of those already rare males into one spot to defend their home? Then a sudden massive inferno would make short work of them potentially. This would be a powerful story hook that would not only give female viera a tragic element if the vast majority of their already small male population was eradicated, but would further solidify even more of an excuse to not include playable male Viera.

We know SE isn't afraid to gut punch the players with tragic stories, after all.

Yup! I said before but also you can make hellsguard roegadyn look like big cats anyway which just makes it more redundant. lion people would be silly imo.

This same argument can be made against Viera with Miqote. You can make miqote or even elezen look like Viera already, so adding Viera is redundant.

[Jaywalker]

This same argument can be made against Viera with Miqote. You can make miqote or even elezen look like Viera already, so adding Viera is redundant.

I disagree on the grounds that I think the body type difference goes a long way in that department tbh. Personally I would have preferred a more alien spin on Lunarians for tall and slim race as opposed to another animal thing, but if it's going to be Viera the ears add a further vertical impression with height. The narrow shoulders and long legs only emphasize further. Elezen have very different facial structure and body structure (best I can describe it is as lanky, whereas viera look like they'll be narrow) and Miqote are teeny tiny. One of the female miqo'te faces does look really similar to Viera from the previews I agree, but the body types remain dramatically different. Also without mods it's kind of tough to hide the extra ears and all, bunny suit ears look like they are fake imo.

I don't want to assume this is a common knowledge thing so if you already know this sorry! But basically one of the big things in design (among other stuff) is forming distinct silhouettes. Basically if you black out the entire figure and just look at the outline, can you tell what character it is. I think Viera do still manage that because the body type is distinct, even if again I'd have preferred something other than animals again.

[Shippuu]

I disagree on the grounds that I think the body type difference goes a long way in that department tbh. Personally I would have preferred a more alien spin on Lunarians for tall and slim race as opposed to another animal thing, but if it's going to be Viera the ears add a further vertical impression with height. The narrow shoulders and long legs only emphasize further. Elezen have very different facial structure and body structure (best I can describe it is as lanky, whereas viera look like they'll be narrow) and Miqote are teeny tiny. One of the female miqo'te faces does look really similar to Viera from the previews I agree, but the body types remain dramatically different. Also without mods it's kind of tough to hide the extra ears and all, bunny suit ears look like they are fake imo.

I don't want to assume this is a common knowledge thing so if you already know this sorry! But basically one of the big things in design (among other stuff) is forming distinct silhouettes. Basically if you black out the entire figure and just look at the outline, can you tell what character it is. I think Viera do still manage that because the body type is distinct, even if again I'd have preferred something other than animals again.

Again, all your arguments still can be applied to the opposite of your claims. You just made excuses for why it's okay despite the tons of overlap the female viera we are getting has with existing races, while stating that a completely unknown and theoretically lion like race has too much overlap and couldn't possibly be unique enough from Roegadyn?

It's funny you talk about distinct silhouettes when ffxiv is pretty poor in that regard, especially with female characters. There is very little difference in the silhouette between female miqote and female au ra for example. And the same can be said for female elezen and female viera, the only major difference being more narrow shoulders on viera and bunny ears instead of elf ears. So by your argument, a male lion race need only distinctly different ears and be a more narrow shouldered version of roegadyn.

You're applying a double standard here.

There is a chance this changed though. I mean, he took the creator of Tactics and FF12 into the team. And if Matsuno-san is really the creator of Viera, then he also has the opportunity to create the Male Viera.

People keep bringing up Matsuno being involved as a positive thing for male viera to be included but seem to forget he's the one that purposely made male viera pretty much non existent in the first place. He may actually share Yoshida's old opinion and not want male viera to be shown or playable either. He certainly didn't have any in the game's he made.

[Jaywalker]

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Naw, I gave a full argument where I was willing to say that there are things I think could be better but there's other stuff I think works. It sounds like you're possibly going into this with the assumption that my claim is that everything is ideal and perfect, which isn't the case for me. I am making the argument that while there are things I'd do differently if I was Square Enix god (which I'm sure is the case for everyone haha), I basically have certain elements I consider higher or lower priorities in evaluating their designs.

For example, I think we have enough humans + animal features. I thought we had enough when it was Miqo'te, and it was definitely enough when we had Au Ra. With Viera I kind of figured it was an inevitable choice because they're popular and people wanted them, but like I said if it was up to me I'd have tried to keep things closer to how Roegadyn, Elezen, Highlanders, and frankly even Lalafells played with facial structure, proportions, and various feature shapes. Sans animal bits.

If however there are going to be more animal bits regardless of my feelings there, I'm not going to throw up my hands and go THEY SUCK GDI WHY MORE ANIMAL PEOPLE. What I'm going to do is look at the various body types and tones we've seen so far and examine whether they do something distinct within that. Which they do. So while it might not be my perfect dream come true, I'd much rather have a tall skinny rabbit people race than say, waifish female lunarians at roughly 5'0 tall. Different elements at different priority levels.

[Gwenorai]

I don't think you're considering a potential story element they could be using with that particular burning wood. Male Viera are already very rare and staunch defenders of the wood. If a significant threat were to approach the woods, it would make sense for them to gather to defend it, no? And if that so happens to gather the majority of those already rare males into one spot to defend their home? Then a sudden massive inferno would make short work of them potentially. This would be a powerful story hook that would not only give female viera a tragic element if the vast majority of their already small male population was eradicated, but would further solidify even more of an excuse to not include playable male Viera.

We know SE isn't afraid to gut punch the players with tragic stories, after all.

If that happened then Ooff, I think the females have a huge problem on their hands than isn't just the loss of the wood. They're going to end up going the way of panda - well, barring halfbreeds of course.

But even with that, it wouldn't eliminate the chance of there being a playable male. Due to the whole time bubble. The male Viera would have left the wood before the blaze and the huge destruction. I mean - come to think on it. Isn't the story of ARR to Stormblood around a year? A year is very recent and especially goes with the past tense that the dramaturge uses regarding Viera - especially with the dramaturge being Yasumi Matsuno.

And while I'm not 100 percent confident because ah, the fickleness of man, I am very much certain that the concept artists of the game as well as Yasumi Matsuno - the creator of Viera - to come up with a male image that he likes. The lion head speculation - since it was a literal lion head seems to make a lot of sense and goes with previous concept art shown.

And of course, them saying 'this is the last race' makes me wary to the idea that they'd just slap in another with zero hints of another coming. There has been zero hints of Ronso or Rev - and they're already established.

And last but not least and the big stretch question.
If Yoshida doesn't like male rabbits, why wear a Bugs bunny shirt? Why didn't he wear a Lola Bunny shirt - the female counterpart to Bugs? I mean there's bound to be shirts of her - a whole generation of young lads had a thing for Lola - space jam anyone? Heck, why didn't he wear a Tsukuyomi shirt?

xD Stupid question but you know, food for thought.

[Shippuu]

And of course, them saying 'this is the last race' makes me wary to the idea that they'd just slap in another with zero hints of another coming. There has been zero hints of Ronso or Rev - and they're already established.

And last but not least and the big stretch question.
If Yoshida doesn't like male rabbits, why wear a Bugs bunny shirt? Why didn't he wear a Lola Bunny shirt - the female counterpart to Bugs? I mean there's bound to be shirts of her - a whole generation of young lads had a thing for Lola - space jam anyone? Heck, why didn't he wear a Tsukuyomi shirt?

They're being very specific in always saying this maybe/likely/possibly the last race. They are 100% leaving themselves open to add more in the future deliberately. They rarely ever state something as being a truly "we will never do X" and it's deliberate.

As for zero hints? In an interview from yoshida at just this fanfest, when specifically asked about t shirt teases for the next job he said he doesn't always want to give hints that he feels there should be more surprises going into the fanfests instead of knowing everything ahead of time. So it really doesn't matter if theres been no official hint or any mention in game. They can incorporate new races without having to lay the ground work before hand.

As for the bugs bunny shirt, who knows, it could have been the pun that it was for a car/race, so bunny race. His shirts have never been anything but obscure or basic references/hints. It feels like you're potentially reading a bit too much meaning into the shirt. Especially when he said he recently watched Peter rabbit (who is also a male bunny) and thought about wearing something like that, but thought it was "too cute" mirroring what he has said previously about male viera technically.

[Iscah]

They're being very specific in always saying this maybe/likely/possibly the last race. They are 100% leaving themselves open to add more in the future deliberately. They rarely ever state something as being a truly "we will never do X" and it's deliberate.

I've mentioned a couple of times, I think there might be an actual hard limit of eight race options in the character creator as it currently exists. (The original choice of one-out-of-five races would be represented in data as a three-digit binary number, which can represent the standard numbers 0-7.)

If this is correct, then Viera (together with their potential male counterpart) would bring the current number to seven out of eight 'slots' filled.

They could add one more race, but that really would be the last, and in a long-term game it makes sense that they want to keep that slot open to release one more race at some later date. Certainly not now when they have plenty of other drawcards to bring in players.

I will wait till Tokyo fanfest, but i will be really disappointed if we end up with gender locked races. Such a step back without motive... That only will make ffxiv looks like a generic korean mmo. What is next? Wings?

Well they did propose "pixie wings" as a potential mount for completing that beast tribe questline...