Male Viera as a playable character! show your support

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Well I can appreciate your caution. Thanks for answering my questions. As I've stated several times already I am in the Pro Bunny Bois camp. But I stand with you on wanting a viable and well thought lore reason for them to be available. So I hope we both come out whatever the future brings happy.

I hope so to, thank you for the Talk

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Lore wise it is... so trivial to rationalize male Viera it actually would be weird if they did, because the conditions that the male Viera are experiencing are IDENTICAL to the one the females are: Homeland destroyed, fleeing their woods, forced to forsake the Green Word, not isolated to the WoL.

Put another way: If you don't have issue with swarms of Viera running around breaking the green word, you shouldn't have an issue if they are male or female. It is literally an identical level of violating their social norms. Like I said earlier, this hand wringing about 'explaining the other PCs' doesn't actually make much sense because the rationale for a male Viera isn't 'the Warrior of Light is special,' it is 'so many Viera had to violate the Green Word that there are now entire non-Green Word following communities.

If that were true, we'd already have Male Viera out in the world, and XIV wouldn't be Potentially the 1st time we'd see them.
The females weren't Forced to leave the Woods, the ones that have left the woods did so on their own, by choice. I have an issue with the Males without a decent lore reason because up to this point, they have stayed in the woods, barely if never seen by anybody. So to just slap them in willy nilly is abit of an issue. And I pick on Viera specifically because as I explained a handful of times, they are a race that existed before and outside of XIV, way back in Tactics. They already have established lore, as suppose to the Miqote which are new to XIV, possibly remnants to the Mithra of XI.
Explaining other Male Viera Adventurers isn't trivial if you just put in their lore that they finally decided to come out of the Woods and join the fight. Instantly explains why we see them so suddenly, and in bigger numbers. Simple.
Females dont need this explanation because they are already in the outside world and some have already forsaken The Will of the Woods, becoming adventurers, dying their hair and integrating with society. The Males haven't 'Yet"

[BunnyBois]

Everything that Dezzmont said.

I don't think it has to be anything to grand or special to validate Male Viera. I would, personally, think that their situation requires at least a basic explanation. They're the unseen protectors of their lands that live an isolationist survival lifestyle and I feel like they'd be the last to break the Green Word. But I don't think it requires some grand tale of their struggles. Just a little something specific to Male Viera. As to your bit about Miqo'te I'll be honest and admit I didn't know that Miqo'te in general are supposed to be rare. But I've never let the choices of the community affect how I perceive or enjoy the lore of the game I'm immersing myself in.

[SturmChurro]

I dont support Male Viera Personally because its a pre-existing race outside of this MMO, so I think if they will fullblown use Viera they could keep its lore consistent. But thats not to say they can't change up and ADD to that lore to bring them out of hiding. Id be more in support of Viera Males, if they have a good or decent enough lore to support them coming out of hiding. And not this "It doesn't matter" or the "I am the warrior of light so im the exception" idea that falls flat and looks lazy once we start seeing other Viera Males running around.

It does not. Other players exist as nameless, faceless "adventurers" in the canon. A lot of times they aren't even acknowledged as having even contributed to story fights. Doesn't matter how many male viera players you see in the world, if you want an in depth lore explanation, it is unnecessary. Unless you start seeing a large majority of added npcs being male viera.

[Averax]

It does not. Other players exist as nameless, faceless "adventurers" in the canon. A lot of times they aren't even acknowledged as having even contributed to story fights. Doesn't matter how many male viera players you see in the world, if you want an in depth lore explanation, it is unnecessary. Unless you start seeing a large majority of added npcs being male viera.

This is SE's stance on player races. Which is why you see a bunch of cat boys running around even though they are rare in the lore. The character you make is the only one that matters to the story. The other player characters are not canon entities. If you were a male viera in eorzea, you may well have just been the only male viera in eorzea. The player character is allowed to defy their race's cultural norms, which is why we even have playable miqo'te and female viera to begin with.

The only reason we don't have them is because of developer limitations, due to the lack of a sufficient budget, because big daddy SE siphons off all of the money this game makes and funnels it into other titles. Anything extra we get is because somebody squeezed it into their already tight schedule as a passion project, which is why Viera and Hrothgar can even equip any head items.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

It does not. Other players exist as nameless, faceless "adventurers" in the canon. A lot of times they aren't even acknowledged as having even contributed to story fights. Doesn't matter how many male viera players you see in the world, if you want an in depth lore explanation, it is unnecessary. Unless you start seeing a large majority of added npcs being male viera.

By just putting a little lore tidbit that male Viera have left the forest and joined the outside world, we could see more Male Viera NPCs as well.
Its a very simple thing.

[Amnmaat]

Still voting for my support for Male Viera. Finish these races if you have confidence on FFXIV sticking around for 10-15 more years.
But if you see XIV being replaced in the next 5 years just wait it out, that's all I gotta say on this subject.

That's really all we should be discussing here, how long will XIV be on the upward swing and how long is SE projecting XIV to last before being replaced? World of warcraft seems to be the gold standard as far as development cost and mmorpg maintenance goes. They realize making a brand new MMO is a massive development cost project so they just keep the game running as long as the player support is still strong.

Square Enix would be smart to follow a similar decision making template for XIV; a new FF mmo would cost a lot of money and time to create. I really don't see XIV dying anytime soon either. So that's, in my opinion, the real factor in all of this. If we get male Viera in 6.0 then the game is bound to run for at least 8-10 more years. If we don't get them then that signals the slowdown of XIV. As a dev you'd really like to finish something as critical as genders on races if you feel confident in your game running for many more years. They'll keep getting asked for male Viera for 10 more years, as opposed to 5-6.

It's a calculation, logics based equation.

[dezzmont]

I don't think it has to be anything to grand or special to validate Male Viera. I would, personally, think that their situation requires at least a basic explanation. They're the unseen protectors of their lands that live an isolationist survival lifestyle and I feel like they'd be the last to break the Green Word. But I don't think it requires some grand tale of their struggles. Just a little something specific to Male Viera. As to your bit about Miqo'te I'll be honest and admit I didn't know that Miqo'te in general are supposed to be rare. But I've never let the choices of the community affect how I perceive or enjoy the lore of the game I'm immersing myself in.

I essentially agree, I am just emphaizing how utterly small it should be. It would actively be weird if the recognition was anything more intense than 'Much like the female tribes we too were sometimes compelled to leave.' Especially because any 'new' reason would need to work with Male Viera made in the future for people who played through the entire game as one.

Like I seriously don't understand the lore based objections to male Viera, it basically plays out like this:

"Female Viera are a very rare group, and almost exclusively live lives in the woods they never leave, but some due to curiosity or due to pressure from Garlemald, despite the fact this violates the green word, a strict social order that virtually all Viera live under, and which means they can never return home."

"Tracks to me."

"Also sometimes the guys do this too for identical reasons, except the social order they are part of is even more oppressive."

"UNBELIEVABLE."

Like maybe there is something I am missing (I DO understand the logic that Viera are a pre-existing race and there is a desire to respect old canon despite this being a new world with new lore) but it is... pretty darn clear the lore was NEVER intended to stop the male Viera they made concept art for and were clearly actively planning to make what with the datafiles in the game leaving a spot for them.

[BunnyBois]

ally plays out like this:

"Female Viera are a very rare group, and almost exclusively live lives in the woods they never leave, but some due to curiosity or due to pressure from Garlemald, despite the fact this violates the green word, a strict social order that virtually all Viera live under, and which means they can never return home."

"Tracks to me."

"Also sometimes the guys do this too for identical reasons, except the social order they are part of is even more oppressive."

Maybe I was presenting my stance poorly but this would literally be enough for me personally. Just a little extra spice since they're coming in later. "It took longer for males to follow suit due a greater magnitude of responsibility and pressure on their shoulders."

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

I essentially agree, I am just emphaizing how utterly small it should be. It would actively be weird if the recognition was anything more intense than 'Much like the female tribes we too were sometimes compelled to leave.' Especially because any 'new' reason would need to work with Male Viera made in the future for people who played through the entire game as one.

Like I seriously don't understand the lore based objections to male Viera, it basically plays out like this:

"Female Viera are a very rare group, and almost exclusively live lives in the woods they never leave, but some due to curiosity or due to pressure from Garlemald, despite the fact this violates the green word, a strict social order that virtually all Viera live under, and which means they can never return home."

"Tracks to me."

"Also sometimes the guys do this too for identical reasons, except the social order they are part of is even more oppressive."

"UNBELIEVABLE."

Like maybe there is something I am missing (I DO understand the logic that Viera are a pre-existing race and there is a desire to respect old canon despite this being a new world with new lore) but it is... pretty darn clear the lore was NEVER intended to stop the male Viera they made concept art for and were clearly actively planning to make what with the datafiles in the game leaving a spot for them.

I don't know where the idea that the males are under a more "Oppressive" law or whatever comes from. The males just simply haven't left the forest unlike their Sisters who have decided that occasionally they leave the woods. It just hasn't happened yet, that or they do it in so fewer numbers then the females that it goes unnoticed. Nothing is stopping the Males from leaving, but the lore just dictates that they probly never have.
Concept art as Ive mentioned earlier doesnt exactly mean it was gonna happen. Like the Aur-Ra were probly gonna legit be a Dragon Beast race according to old concept art, and now look at them, they are another humanoid race. Or it looked like the Lupin were gonna come in as either another beast race tribe or possibly playable...nope they never happened until Stormblood where they were just NPCs and a few Enemy type characters.

The simple fact is, its just never been written or shown that the males have Forsaken the Will of the Woods.
Nothing says they can't, or never will, but since it hasn't happened yet, just a simple lore tidbit explaining they decided to finally leave the Woods will update and expand the lore to show that they finally have. So we now have a few Viera Male NPCs, and when we do see other Male Viera Running around, nobody can be all "this doesn't make sense/is inconsistent with the lore" because the lore has been updated.

Im puzzled why there is so much Resistance to this idea.