Gender locked race?

[Karl0217]

Concept art =/= developed in-game. Also a lot of concepts end up not being used, that the point of a concept. The male/female in the code could possibly be for security.
And yes the lore dumps, Yoshida said that they gave some hints inside. After reading them for the first time yesterday and having no positive nor negative feeling toward the male Viera subject, the one line that stuck out in this lore dump was the last one : "They simply do not exist to us."

When he said the line "They simply do not exist to us" he was talking specifically about his time in Dalamasca. Full lore quote, not just the part that people keep ripping out of context:

I spent many a moon in the Desert Sapphire and while I saw all manner of wonderous creatures, not once did I lay mine eyes on a male Viera, nor did I hear of one living in the city. They simply do not exist to us.

He wasn't talking about the male Viera population in the entire world, just what the population was specifically in Dalamasca. It has the same importance as somebody in Ul'Dah prior to Yugiri's arrival claiming they never met an Au Ra before and saying they might as well not exist to them. I wonder how relevant a statement about their numbers in Dalamasca is to their numbers in their homelands.

More to the point we are heading into Viera Territory, the Ra'Tika Greatwood, next expansion. Territory that the same lore dump says that all the male Viera guard and shoot outsiders on-sight when they enter. You really think we are not going to run into any hostile male Viera NPCs, who all serve as the border patrol and swear not to let evil encroach on said territory, while waltzing through the Greatwood after somebody, probably the Imperial Garlean Army, leveled one of their villages?

As for the concept art, the thing you are overlooking is that the female version of the concept art was used in the game.

[Shippuu]

Lmao, why are you even complaining that I brought up FF12 ultima? Come on dude. She's wifu form in BOTH games. Her bottom half has always been like that 'strange, mysterious and in terms of FF14 mysterious', but the top half has always been how it is - beautiful wifu. Imagine complaining about that when the 24 man is a throwback to Tactics and FF12?

Yes, and? Every other example people have posted as being some slant has also been throwbacks, so it's somehow a sin if FFXIV makes them throwbacks to their past appearances and doesn't completely remake them into unrecognizable monsters?

You don't have a point dude, not in regards to the female's enemies always looking like wife material in humanoid form.

If we're talking about the franchise as a whole, sure. But I assumed we were talking about Final Fantasy XIV regarding it's enemies. I quote someone saying "you're not going to find a completely deformed female enemy because they want them to still be waifu material." which is a broad statement and objectively false.

[Crushnight]

Arbitrary. It doesn't matter if they have waifu forms, they still have forms we fight them in where they're full on bestial. SE still had to develop the assets for them in their monstrous forms when they could have just gone straight to the waifu forms. And the dragons are still female enemies that look like beasts. They don't get to not count because then in order to make something visually look female it has to have feminine traits, of which you would just call it waifu pandering again.

And bringing in examples of waifu forms from other games? Really? Like, the entire prospect of people using Sophia, Garuda, Shiva, etc. as examples of some design bent when they're all throwback enemies from a history of Final Fantasy games and so their design is less intended to be attractive for attractive sake, and more to call back to the long history of how these enemies have looked in Final Fantasy games. There's little point in including these enemies that have that history if you're going to completely change their design to the point they aren't recognizable.

gunna stop you there Shippuu you shouldn't use garuda in that because
ff3 garuda (man transformed):


FF9:


FF10:


FF11:


Its very obvious which one ff14 is inspired by but Garuda until ff11 did not have a female form and only increased to a recognizable female form due to ff14, Sophia is a direct rip from ff6 excluding lore, Shiva however is a good point be weird for ff to have a male Shiva after so long with using the opposite gender to the actual Mythology/Religion

[cicatriz313]

When he said the line "They simply do not exist to us" he was talking specifically about his time in Dalamasca. Full lore quote, not just the part that people keep ripping out of context:



He wasn't talking about the male Viera population in the entire world, just what the population was specifically in Dalamasca.


As for the concept art, the thing you are overlooking is that the female version of the concept art was used in the game.

You can't say read the full lore and ignore the 3 statements the dramaturge makes before that one. He literally says the males don't even meet with their kin aside from breeding. They live alone and one would be foolish to go seek them, because you wouldn't see one (or you'd be killed.) People are focusing on this death part but it doesn't make the first part meaningless. It's not just Dalmasca he's talking about he's making a statement about society in general and using Dalmasca because this is supposed to be an avatar of Matsuno.

No one is overlooking the fact that they use a similar model as one of the concept art pieces to create Viera. Like of course they did. That's the point of concept art. You're just choosing to completely ignore the other pieces of concept art revealed in that same panel that show that they don't use everything they showed...

[Shippuu]

He wasn't talking about the male Viera population in the entire world, just what the population was specifically in Dalamasca.

I mean, if there isn't a single male Viera in Dalmasca, the biggest hub that's closest in location to their homeland, it doesn't paint a positive picture that there'd be others even further away.

More to the point we are heading into Viera Territory, the Ra'Tika Greatwood, next expansion. Territory that the same lore dump says that all the male Viera guard and shoot outsiders on-sight when they enter. You really think we are not going to run into any hostile male Viera NPCs, who all serve as the border patrol and swear not to let evil encroach on said territory, while waltzing through the Greatwood after somebody, probably the Imperial Garlean Army, leveled one of their villages?

People keep bringing this up, but we certainly didn't have any trouble getting to the Orbonne Monestary which is inside the Golmore Jungle. We weren't riddled with arrows stepping foot there.
Male Viera may be protector's of the wood, but they aren't omnipresent. And there's nothing to say we wouldn't get some special treatment like we always do, some magical boon that blesses us with the favor of the woods. So if male viera hear the Green Word, it'd tell them we're here to help and thus have no reason to attack us in the slightest.

As for the concept art, the thing you are overlooking is that the female version of the concept art was used in the game.

Except it wasn't. None of the old designs shown from 2015 were used. The closest one had traits that the in-game version does not.

[Lacan]

I'm just glad the thread has got as much attention as it has since that's one way of letting SE know that people want m viera. I'm still holding out for Japan fanfest. March needs to hurry up!

[cicatriz313]

Its very obvious which one ff14 is inspired by but Garuda until ff11 did not have a female form and only increased to a recognizable female form due to ff14, Sophia is a direct rip from ff6 excluding lore, Shiva however is a good point be weird for ff to have a male Shiva after so long with using the opposite gender to the actual Mythology/Religion

Wasn't Garuda created by the 1.0 dev team? Aka the ff11 team? I might be wrong because I didn't play 1.0 but I thought Garuda was part of 1.0

[Shippuu]

gunna stop you there Shippuu you shouldn't use garuda in that because

Yeah, that's fair, my bad. I couldn't recall how Garuda looked in the older ones. I just remember it from XI mostly, which XIV followed a similar design (and now XV too).

Still, Shiva, Sophia, Lakshmi etc. are all clearly throwbacks to their past designs, with XIV's actually taking some liberties like making Lakshmi have a lower snake body (even if we can't really see it). So if anything, XIV has made some of them a bit less feminine/waifu.

[Karl0217]

Not my fault you can't differentiate from a hypothetical as to why they MIGHT do something compared to you saying they absolutely DID do something. One of these things would need hard evidence to prove, the other is simply speculation.
Even then, you provided zero proof for any of your claims, so why should I give you any in return if I needed to?

Oh but you have made statements about what the developers did do and why they did it. Shall we look at one of the more recent examples?

Them undoing the gender locks isn't indicative of them necessarily feeling like they were damaging to the game, but were likely just one of many avenues they could use to earn bonus points with their existing and future playerbase for the relaunch.

That is a unequivocal statement about why they did do something in the past and according to your little statement above you need hard evidence to prove. Where is it?

And the reason you should provide it is because you keep demanding everybody else in this thread supply you with evidence they make a claim you dislike. Failure to do so after demanding left and right everybody else do so is hypocritical.

So now you're putting words in my mouth? In that direct quote I never said it was a MAJOR selling point. Is a new player race A selling point? yes. Is it a major one? absolutely not or else FFXIV would launch every expansion with them.

If it wasn't a major selling point why did you expect it majorly increase their market share in the Chinese and Korean markets? Minor selling points (especially a minor selling point found in many a game in that market) don't significantly increase market shares, major ones do.

Concept art, one of the most earliest and often discarded part of development. Where hundreds of thousands of concepts go to the cutting room floor, reiterated by Yoshida just last fanfest during the art panel. Concept art is one of the weakest forms of evidence you could possibly use.

And statements given by a developer in a interview years prior to the concept art even being developed about how he personally disliked the concept is weaker still. Yet, you have no trouble using that to back your claims.

Except you really don't, outside of the code being set up for male and female viera, which has plenty of logical reasons for why this may be so even if they are genderlocked, from code uniformity, to a longer term plan to make them unlocked at a later point.

And one of the possibilities is that the coding was made because they intend both male and female Viera to be playable at launch. Why should the "what if/ just so" theories you favor to explain the if/else conditional statements for male Viera player characters be weighed more heavily then those you dislike?

Concept are is not evidence of final inclusion. Lore dump is only flavor text written up, and even that text implies they won't be around more likely than being playable.

As I pointed out in my response to Tharne the lore dump specifically about the Viera population in Dalamasca when the NPC makes the statement "They simply do not exist to us." How relevant is a statement about their numbers in Dalamasca to their numbers in their homelands like the Ra'tika Greatwood?

[Gwenorai]

You can't say read the full lore and ignore the 3 statements the dramaturge makes before that one. He literally says the males don't even meet with their kin aside from breeding. They live alone and one would be foolish to go seek them, because you wouldn't see one (or you'd be killed.) People are focusing on this death part but it doesn't make the first part meaningless. It's not just Dalmasca he's talking about he's making a statement about society in general and using Dalmasca because this is supposed to be an avatar of Matsuno.

No one is overlooking the fact that they use a similar model as one of the concept art pieces to create Viera. Like of course they did. That's the point of concept art. You're just choosing to completely ignore the other pieces of concept art revealed in that same panel that show that they don't use everything they showed...

He also talks in past tense, states that before all of this if you left the wood you were a Viera no longer. Times have changed however and that's no longer the case. It also states that a Viera can seek the aid of outsiders if the forest/their people are in danger. The men leave not because they want to but out of necessity. They are the first line of defence and most of the time, the last.

You don't go into those woods looking for a male Viera - I think that's just him adding in 'drama'. Fact is if you go into those woods you're probably going to die unless you are escorted by a Viera or have their blessing.

I really don't understand why people are getting confused about the 'They do not exist to us' part. It's an old saying of course and not what we use today. But it's how someone describes an object/person/place that is known to exist by hearsay but hasn't been seen by any outsiders; and if they have, they haven't survived to relay the tale.

Example; a tribe on an island that hasn't been inhabited by the modern world. They have customs and their own religion. We will never make contact with them and only a handful will see them. We know they exist by hearsay, secondhand experience and obvious physical evidence. But, they're not on our radar, they are air and only matter to those who actually go and seek them out. Those who do try to seek them out end up attacked and killed.
This is a true scenario btw, there's a place like this - forgot the islands name though. Give it a google.

Let's switch back to Viera; you can see the similarities. Hearsay is the females talking about them; secondhand experience is the females again. The evidence is the young kits and the corpses of the fools that tried to cause the jungle/wood harm and were killed.

Now let's break it down.
Lore states they exist; he goes on to say they exist.
He then goes 'they do not exist to us'
It's either one or the other buddy, there is no in-between. Dramaturge is just being dramatic, hence his title. Either that or he's drunk.