Male Viera as a playable character! show your support

[Theodric]

Yeah, that's what "lowest common denominator" means. It's deliberately made to appeal to the greatest number of people. Instead of making a uniform race, it feels as though they took the concept art and said "well what's the simplest common value players want in a female character that would give us wide adoption rates for the new race?" and then applied it to the Au Ra, while leaving the men as musclebound hunks since that's the lowest common value players want in a male character.

Doesn't mean it's necessarily a good thing though, which is why you have people in another thread fighting over femhroths and whether or not they'll look like the men or be blue miqo'te. And you have Xaela women, who are supposed to be rugged nomads but don't exactly act like it because SE decided that we needed a second miqo'te instead in order to sell more fantasia.

I don't think mass appeal is necessarily a bad thing when it comes to features that require a lot of resources/long term investment. At the end of the day, most people do want to play conventionally attractive options because that's just what sells. A fairly high portion of players like to praise the existence of non-conventional options, but even many of those individuals do not put their money where their mouths are so to speak.

For example, there's a often lot of comments on Reddit and Twitter about how amazing female roegadyn supposedly are and yet they're the least played race/gender combination in the game. A spot that they've occupied pretty consistently at that.

On my end, as a gay guy who likes classically handsome men it's Midlander and Raen/Xaela men that appeal to me the most out of the current batch of playable options.

I'm a firm advocate of enhanced character customisation at a later date, though - which may be a way to alleviate some of the long standing issues, real and perceived, with the creation system.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Meanwhile RPers are laughing at people saying "lore says they never leave the Wood!!!"

I've got one bun who left the jungle over 70 years ago, and another that left 20 years ago and has lived in Sharlayan since then.

And guess what? Neither break the lore - if the women can choose to leave despite the Green Word they all live under, so can males. Shocking, I know!

Honestly....did the Lore Ever REALLY say that?
Like, Im one of those "But Muh Lore" types of people, but I dont think there is anything to suggest the Male Viera NEVER leave the Wood.
The whole argument with Male Viera stems from...We have never seen them illustrated until now, and then all we ever had was that Snippet from the...Dramturge I think its called. So those put together paint a picture that the Males Never Leave the wood, and their "rarness" is because of that, without 100% verification.

We dont necessarily NEED it exactly, but this is why I was kinda more in favor that the Male Viera should have Debut in their own ivalice game. Because yeah, there is no reason they couldn't leave the woods like the women, but the fact they never did presumably till now does make alot of questions popup...like is there a Reason?....or is it pure laziness or forgetfulness to ever make & Include the Males? Without this, some people such as myself just kinda draw the conclusion that the Males for whatever reason are more dedicated to the Word or the Woods then the Females. A Hazy, lazy slapped together lorebit can do that.
And it has a greater effect on Viera because they existed Before & outside of XIV. Unlike Hrothgar or the AuRa who can pretty much be written like WhatEv. .

[MellowMink]

That Flying Car was explained that it could actually exist. Garlean Tech isn't far off from it.
So this is kind of a Weak Gottcha.

And the living chocolate mount that comes from trademarked Butterfingers candy? The Lunar Whale bought with cash that just spontaneously appears in the world without any prior mention? The mikoshi that's carried by Namazu who apparently follow me around on all my adventures, which also includes multiple worlds despite the game's narrative making it clear that that's not an easy thing that most people can just easily do?

We could also talk about how story characters won't react differently to my character wearing nothing but a wiggly slime head in serious cutscenes. Nobody seems to care if I fight primals while dressed in provocative bunny clothes either. Me using a Fantasia potion is never questioned or even slightly acknowledged by anyone else in the game, and it seems to retroactively change the history of my character as well. What about the fact that my character just stands completely still while someone gives an overly dramatic monologue and slowly walks into a boss room despite me easily being able to prevent that upcoming encounter? We could also talk about a questline where I'm not able to prevent something from happening in the future because I'm never given a choice to speak up by the developers despite actively wanting to.

There are many things in the game that don't currently make sense in terms of lore, so it's weird that some people are so hung about a few more player character options of all things, especially since I'm again not easily going to believe that every single male Viera across both the Source and First worlds universally would agree to never appear to any other non-Viera characters, although even if your character is a female Viera, they still refuse to ever appear to you for some unexplained reason; that's less immersive to me than some players being able to play as male Viera who don't share the same beliefs as the entire rest of their species across multiple worlds.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Other players are non-canon. It's the simplest explanation.

[MellowMink]

Other players are non-canon. It's the simplest explanation.

If that's the case, then that makes the "but my immersion" argument even weaker, as there aren't a decent amount of male Viera publicly walking around but only one such person then. Outliers in any huge group of people are to be expected; it would be less logical if there weren't any.

[Kaoru_Nagisa]

May not break the lore but RPers can say anything they want as long as the people they're RPing with accept it. During ARR and HW you had a bunch of people who RP'd as dragons who pretended to be hyur and elezen. I've also bumped into people who RP'd as robots that look 100% human and more than a few vampires, despite neither of those existing in the game. And then there's the hordes of dragoons despite the game saying there's only about 9 left alive.

I mean, yes - the lore is not so fleshed out and filled in to the point people cannot deviate or come up with plausible ideas that are supported by what lore we do have. Not to mention Word of God (Yoshi-P) having stated in the past that people are free to RP as they want, regardless of what lore may or may not be there.

People RPing as dragons is perfectly plausible within the boundaries of lore. Glamour exists, for all manner of creatures - some innately, others through the use of spells or prisms. People turning into dragons is also within the bounds of lore, thanks to Thordan and his knights partaking of Ratatoskr's eyes way back when (and starting the Dragonsong War as a result).

Robots who look human is also supported simply by the fact Allagans existed. Honestly, a good chunk of weird ideas can be supported simply because of Allagans being Allagans. And now, we have Nier lore intertwined with the First.

Vampires can exist as well, if not exactly in the sense some people think of - but there's an entire Shard of creatures that are basically considered 'vampires' insofar as they feed on aether to sustain themselves outside the Void. There are also people who can end up doing the same thing, the Nightkin being an example.

Dragoons existed far before that little blurb in the Encyclopedia Eorzea, as well - and their continued existence after that can easily be attributed to a number of things, not least of which being former or retired dragoons. As well as people who could have simply been trained in the art of the dragoon by former, retired, or disgraced dragoons from Ishgard.

Much of the game's lore is very short, or few and far between - and sometimes, inconsistent. But that is part of the beauty of it, as well, especially for roleplayers. There can often be ideas that, while never explicitly seen or talked about, are plausible within the bounds of what we currently do know.

Which is why people who cling to this "but the lore says!!" really make me laugh; the lore in many respects are more guidelines to follow than hard-set rules. The lore said the same thing about male miqo'te, too, and has not been changed to reflect the fact we can play as them now since 2.0 onward. Lore has always been a poor basis for in-game character race limitations, tbh, and Yoshi seems to share that sentiment.

(Apologies if words string together oddly, been having to work on a homebrew system and it's doing my brain a scramble.)

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

And the living chocolate mount that comes from trademarked Butterfingers candy? The Lunar Whale bought with cash that just spontaneously appears in the world without any prior mention? The mikoshi that's carried by Namazu who apparently follow me around on all my adventures, which also includes multiple worlds despite the game's narrative making it clear that that's not an easy thing that most people can just easily do?

We could also talk about how story characters won't react differently to my character wearing nothing but a wiggly slime head in serious cutscenes. Nobody seems to care if I fight primals while dressed in provocative bunny clothes either. Me using a Fantasia potion is never questioned or even slightly acknowledged by anyone else in the game, and it seems to retroactively change the history of my character as well. What about the fact that my character just stands completely still while someone gives an overly dramatic monologue and slowly walks into a boss room despite me easily being able to prevent that upcoming encounter? We could also talk about a questline where I'm not able to prevent something from happening in the future because I'm never given a choice to speak up by the developers despite actively wanting to.

There are many things in the game that don't currently make sense in terms of lore, so it's weird that some people are so hung about a few more player character options of all things, especially since I'm again not easily going to believe that every single male Viera across both the Source and First worlds universally would agree to never appear to any other non-Viera characters, although even if your character is a female Viera, they still refuse to ever appear to you for some unexplained reason; that's less immersive to me than some players being able to play as male Viera who don't share the same beliefs as the entire rest of their species across multiple worlds.

Lol...all I said was the Flying Car is Explained that is could exist in the FFXIV world.
Did you mean to Quote a Different Post?

[TheMightyMollusk]

Chocolate? The model that's used in the quest for Saint Mocciane's (Hard)? That's, uh......that's not chocolate.

[SturmChurro]

I don't think mass appeal is necessarily a bad thing when it comes to features that require a lot of resources/long term investment. At the end of the day, most people do want to play conventionally attractive options because that's just what sells. A fairly high portion of players like to praise the existence of non-conventional options, but even many of those individuals do not put their money where their mouths are so to speak.

Yeah, especially when adding something like a new race may come at the cost of other things in the game, and developer workload in general.

[Lastelli]

Yeah, especially when adding something like a new race may come at the cost of other things in the game, and developer workload in general.

Everything comes at the cost of other things in the game. I hate fishing but I don't go around crying that they shouldn't waste resources on that because I'm not interested in it. I don't play female characters yet I don't constantly whine about how they clearly favor them for glamour and gearing options. Weak argument, really.