Male Viera as a playable character! show your support

[SkyEdge1]

That was a decision taken during the transition from 1.0 to 2.0 when consumer confidence was at it's absolute lowest point and they needed every advantage.

You know, it occurs to me that this is kind of a weird decision that not just SE but plenty of companies tend to do. With 1.0 their main goal was, "how do we get people back, and keep people playing?" The mentality was regardless of the cost we should listen to the player base because the return on investment is huge when players you know...play your game. So why is it that after repeated success the mentality is, 'why focus on current long time players, when we can instead focus on (potential) new players' I feel like this is the path that ends up leading long time players to feel betrayed and unheard when decisions are done in favor of a new audience that isn't even playing yet.

[Burningskull]

Yup. Lots of people feeling bad for SE should understand that it's only their fault and they are the ones that chose to do something that nobody asked for, so now they can face the consequences

SE did kinda step on their own foot. They had already decided on Hrothgar, but then they decide to put Fran in the Ivalice raids and they knew everyone would be all, "but you have the Fran model why can't we play as Viera?" So they didn't make Female Hrothgar and made Female Viera. But now they don't have enough resources or man power / time to make the other two genders so they lock those races with a "maybe we'll do it later / we'll look at the player feedback."

It also didn't help that instead of just coming out and saying Viera were going to be female only when they announced them that they kept saying, "you know we have another fanfest btw right?" Backlash would have still been there but at least they wouldn't have been hyped up for something that wasn't going to happen.

[Greven]

Maybe they should start making official polls again like those at the beginning in 2.0 where they asked what type of races and jobs players wanted. It was quite successful and everyone were happy about the results.

[Theodric]

Official polls would only work if they targeted everyone by being available in-game. If they limit it to the forum, the results would be skewed. Anyone who happened to be banned from the forum wouldn't be able to participate and the majority of players do not post here in the first place.

[Alacran]

I think cutting through the fluff, what they're really trying to do is capture refugees from other games or new players who feel put off by the lack of a bestial race, probably because an analyst in the company suggested this is a demographic the game is currently not capitalising on. It's an uncertain gamble, though, and existing stats on these races both in XIV (closest proxy being Roegadyn) and in other games don't exactly inspire confidence - even if you just look at the raw numbers and ignore the reasons as to why some bestial races enjoy a degree of popularity, there is nothing at all to suggest male Viera would not end up being the more highly played of the two.

Now, I don't exactly favour diversity for its own sake, but I'm struggling to see 1) how the Viera females fit the "fierce warrior" archetype and 2) what they're adding exactly. I agree that the rationale for not adding male Viera on either of these points is paper thin. If they failed to make Viera males look adequately different or fierce that'd be a failure of imagination on their part and nothing inherent to the race as an option.

For female Hrothgar, there should be enough ways to avoid making them look like tanks but still retaining a bestial look, like this art:

My issue with this art is that it does not accurately represent what a female Ronso looks like. Why should male Hrothgar look so bestial with their muzzles where as female Hrothgar look more Human/ Hyur like in their facial structure? Such Sexual Dimorphism would not only invite even more controversy and backlash, but also should they go down this route, what the hell was the whole ordeal about?

I have said it before, I genuinely hated the Hrothgar reveal trailer. Everything from their ridiculous faces with their limited facial emotes, to their worryingly horrible posture/ animations. They are literally the laziest SE could have gone in terms of presentation and that was before i found out about their inability to use many helms/ head gear options. The though of these things in cut scene heavy moments is laughable at best. Their inclusion lowers the overall presentation of the game world and i feel makes that much harder to get people to play, let alone take it seriously. I can't begin to imagine just how flat so much exposition will be made to suffer from those dumb rubber masked muzzles, i truly expect to be ripped out from the scene every damn time one of them lope into frame.

However i understand, i am not the only one who plays this game. I understand there are others who want more diversity in this game in regards to player character creation, i don't like it but i understand it. That fan art is just more of the same, just another female character made to look another "pretty waifu" sacrificing major racial identifying racial traits for sex appeal.

Often i argued that bestial races had no place in FFXIV due to them not fitting the aesthetic, i hold firm to to that. SE obviously does not, having gone so far to actually revert to gender locking races with "doubtful and cheap lore". I never wanted to see a muzzled face wearing something like the Song Bird outfit, hempen gear, or heaven forbid in erp, in my time playing this game.

While i may disagree with this (vehemently), it's still a scratches a niche for some.

(This is one of the few that wasn't overly... explicit i could find. *reaches for eye bleach and hot spoon*)

I understand the models are still being tweaked and there is a chance the wretche...er unfinished models presented at Tokyo are still not finalized. My hope is that despite of backlash they roll back some of the more bestial aspects to something more like Bless Online rather than World of Warcraft in terms of design.

WoW Worgen.

Bless Online Pantera

Yes this is this would be an extreme roll back from what was unveiled, and it does look more like the fan art i spoke against. The point i'm trying to get across is that it must be equal for both genders. Another cute cat girl race invalidates the whole issue as to why Male Viera were cut from development. I'll gladly fight or a pair of races i don't plan to main (Highlander Hyur forever), even if it's something that personally offends me. However it must be equal for all, half measures are what got us here, has increased their work load, and negatively affected their brand. One never let personal feelings dictate another enjoyment solely, from the reports that's what YP did. I feel his dislike of male Viera is the reason for all this (based of the past interview disparaging them as looking wired).

[Lauront]

I don't fundamentally disagree with your points on any of those fronts. I only posted that fan art as a better alternative than taller miqo'te 2.0. As I said, I'm not hugely invested in Hrothgar design, other than being of the opinion they should remove the gender-lock from both races, but I agree that a move towards looking like the Pantera would be a big improvement.

Official polls would only work if they targeted everyone by being available in-game. If they limit it to the forum, the results would be skewed. Anyone who happened to be banned from the forum wouldn't be able to participate and the majority of players do not post here in the first place.

They can just attach it to the game launcher and also email it out, as well as having it on the Lodestone. I think that would ensure it had broad enough reach.

[GrizzlyTank]

I just don't get why they had to skip over male Viera... Especially after they finally released the bunny outfit for males after years of requests.

Also a pity that they are still avoiding giving other races than hyur a different physique depending on their clans.

[reivaxe]

This worries me, I won't lie. Look at their reasoning for adding male Hroths - they wanted to diversify the races, right? But what did the females get? Tol waifus with bunny ears. Elezen + Bunny ears. That doesn't do much for diversity, now does it?

So, did they decide that giving female Viera was more important than the aesthetic diversity among the females? If so, why not give us bunny boys instead of male Hroths for the same reason, seeing how chances are that they'd be much more played than male Hroths going by existing numbers (specifically male Roes)? And if that's not it and they truly did think female Viera brought something new to the table... 1. why wouldn't bunny boys? 2. ....really? Really?!

They've explained this more than once.

We got viera because people have been asking for Viera since 2013 and as far as they can tell this is the last addition to the race line up. They make it clear that to some degree they felt they had to add them because of this.
HROTHGAR actually add something to the game much like scaly people did and request for a beastly race exploded this expansion. The devs have been wanting to add one for some time looking at past concept art.

As for stats female playing players favoring playing attractive or cute females is clear as day. Female elezen and fem reo are undervalued by a huge amount because they're not conventionally attractive. Male toons, however, are more evenly spread showing that their players are more open to unique appearances. Roebros are not far from elezen males and the better designed, uniquely beastly match for their body shape proved to be much more popular.

So yeah, if they're trying to make the most people AND the devs happy well also adding to the choices players have then beastly race plus viera is the best path.

And I know this is the Viera male thread but I find it funny that people seem to be so sure they'd be so popular compared to HROTHGAR when they would add nothing but a 3rd option for tall skinny handsome males but with none of the cool beastly looks and only different ears to the elezen.

[BillyKaplan]

And I know this is the Viera male thread but I find it funny that people seem to be so sure they'd be so popular compared to HROTHGAR when they would add nothing but a 3rd option for tall skinny handsome males but with none of the cool beastly looks and only different ears to the elezen.

They'd be adding something people have been clamoring to see for literal years since male Viera were never shown in any of the games. They'd be adding lore, animations, and feel all different to Elezen. And say what you will, but the entire point of the post you quoted is that they lost the right to use the "aesthetic diversity" claim when they chose to add female Viera instead of female Hrothgars (though I will concede it brings more to the table for females because they chose to make female Au Ra a fem Miqo'te clone instead of what was shown in their concept art - but imagine how much more they could've gained from female Hroths because of that selfsame reason).

[Lauront]

The fallacy in the line of thinking reivaxe is putting forward is that being different alone suffices to make a race popular. Again, they don't need to be vastly different - just better in terms of their look, animation, etc. than existing picks. Not everyone likes the beastly look and there's also better ways of doing it than the Hrothgar. We have several different race picks with builds much less refrigerator-like than Roegadyns', and even the one with the most awkward animations and proportions, Elezen, still beats them out. Meanwhile, the ones without the animation issues pull far ahead. What is adding a cat face and slightly better textures going to do to drastically improve on their figures? I've yet to see anything but claims that there's huge demand for Hrothgar based on little more than anecdote.