Male Viera as a playable character! show your support

[SoloWingMetatron]

My personal perspective is obviously that I would love to be able to play as a male Viera, for the simple reason of it being one of my favourite FF races. I recognize that males have not been shown or even barely mentioned in past lore until now...however I think that is exactly why SE should make a push to include them. The lore surrounding Viera is not that developed due to them being so secretive. Their inclusion in XIV is a great way to expand on the race lore and actually show more of who and what they are....not just the males, but also culture and settlements.

All this is for me is a simple request and I am hopeful SE will eventually come forward and say that they will develop male Viera. However should they state that they will never be implemented...it's not the end of the world for me. I'm still happy to play as my Au Ra and I actually think Hrothgar look pretty cool...not my usual go to aesthetic, but I'm looking forward to seeing them in the benchmark character creator...if I can come up with a look I like, then I'll probably change to one.

I may prefer a male Viera...but I feel Hrothgar are getting unfairly critiqued. They're a great looking race!

[zeylos]

My personal perspective is obviously that I would love to be able to play as a male Viera, for the simple reason of it being one of my favourite FF races. I recognize that males have not been shown or even barely mentioned in past lore until now...however I think that is exactly why SE should make a push to include them. The lore surrounding Viera is not that developed due to them being so secretive. Their inclusion in XIV is a great way to expand on the race lore and actually show more of who and what they are....not just the males, but also culture and settlements.

All this is for me is a simple request and I am hopeful SE will eventually come forward and say that they will develop male Viera. However should they state that they will never be implemented...it's not the end of the world for me. I'm still happy to play as my Au Ra and I actually think Hrothgar look pretty cool...not my usual go to aesthetic, but I'm looking forward to seeing them in the benchmark character creator...if I can come up with a look I like, then I'll probably change to one.

I may prefer a male Viera...but I feel Hrothgar are getting unfairly critiqued. They're a great looking race!

I'm glad you enjoy the hrotgar! ^^
For me in particular, no male viera is a bigger deal, and I do think that SE will implement them, be it at 5.x or at 6.0.
Hope you really like the hrotgar and enjoy making one ^^!

[Wolfyboy]

There's multiple reasons to doubt that male Hrothgar would be as popular as male Viera and I've yet to see anything from reivaxe (or anyone else, for that matter) that really has done much to suggest otherwise barring speculation about suppressed demand for a beast race... which stats from other games don't really bear out. Even in WoW, it's at most 30%, and then split across very diffuse races with very different body types, and even then not all of that 30% is "bestial" - some is grotesque, e.g. Forsaken. They're not easily substitutable one with another, e.g. to borrow from another game, a serpentine with a feline race, or an orc with a troll.

https://realmpop.com/us.html
https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment..._link_between/
https://www.disabled-world.com/calcu...percentage.php (If you’d like to do it yourself)

I have a long shift today so I thought I might crunch the numbers about population of males of each race in WoW. I keep seeing the 30% number thrown around which is the total population male and female of the races. It isn’t focusing on the males which the discussion of Viera vs Hrothgar is about. I sorted from highest to least:

Main Races
1) Human - 8.202 (14.7%)
2) Blood elf - 6.829 (16.3%)
3) Orc - 5.544 (7%)
4) Tauren - 5.117 (6.1%)
5) Night elf - 4.953 (11.6%)
6) Undead - 4.482 (6%)
7) Troll - 3.623 (5.6%)
8) Worgen 3.54 (5%)
9) Dwarf 3.315 (3.9%)
10) Pandaren 2.53 (4.6%)
11) Gnome 2.255 (4.1%)
12) Draenei 2.035 (5.8%)
13) Goblin 1.855 (2.9%)

Human characters - 27.589 (Hum/BE/NE/Dwa/Gno/Drae) 6 races (56.4%)
Monstrous - 26.691 (Orc/Tau/Und/Tro/Wor/Pan/Gob) 7 races (37.2%)

Allied Races
Highmountain 0.56 (0.7%)
Dark Iron 0.522 (0.7%)
Void elf 0.498 (1.7%)
Maghar Orc 0.433 (0.6%)
Nightborne 0.339 (1.3%)
Lightborne 0.256 (0.8%)

Human characters 1.1615 (Dark Iron/Void elf/Nightborne/Lightborne) 4 races (4.5%)
Monstrous 0.993 (Mag Orc/High Moun) 2 races (1.3%)

I didn’t include Zand Trolls/Kul Humans due to the reddit user not splitting them up; however, through anecdotal evidence we can assume that their both majority males. Through the conclusion of what I’ve researched in WoW, monstrous males are played almost as similar rates as human looking characters. The buffer monstrous races have more people playing them as individual races then the lanky/short/fat ones. The more human the human characters look the more people will play them. From the looks of it a size difference (Really large or short) and odd skin colors will make people play a human race category character less.

[Kelryth]

waffle

au'ra would be awesome except for two things. Their absurd size and their horns. Some of the horns are ugly but the horns are locked to the faces and the cool looking horns have ugly faces attached to them. I wasted a fantasia trying to change my horns. I switched to the sexy miqo you see before you now and love it alot more then the au'ra.



High Res: https://1drv.ms/u/s!ArXBYkP90eNAiGgmTbfVXh2XotOP


Personally, I like horny horned guys and antlered guys and guys with animal ears. Tusks are cool though they can look kinda silly coming out of the mouth. Pointy elf like ears are also cool. Bunny ears is just plain awesome! Playing as a bog standard human would be so boring don'tcha think?

[Lauront]

https://realmpop.com/us.html
https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comment..._link_between/
https://www.disabled-world.com/calcu...percentage.php (If you’d like to do it yourself)
I have a long shift today so I thought I might crunch the numbers about population of males of each race in WoW. I keep seeing the 30% number thrown around which is the total population male and female of the races. It isn’t focusing on the males which the discussion of Viera vs Hrothgar is about. I sorted from highest to least:

Main Races
1) Human - 8.202 (14.7%)
2) Blood elf - 6.829 (16.3%)
3) Orc - 5.544 (7%)
4) Tauren - 5.117 (6.1%)
5) Night elf - 4.953 (11.6%)
6) Undead - 4.482 (6%)
7) Troll - 3.623 (5.6%)
8) Worgen 3.54 (5%)
9) Dwarf 3.315 (3.9%)
10) Pandaren 2.53 (4.6%)
11) Gnome 2.255 (4.1%)
12) Draenei 2.035 (5.8%)
13) Goblin 1.855 (2.9%)

Human characters - 27.589 (Hum/BE/NE/Dwa/Gno/Drae) 6 races (56.4%)
Monstrous - 26.691 (Orc/Tau/Und/Tro/Wor/Pan/Gob) 7 races (37.2%)

Allied Races
Highmountain 0.56 (0.7%)
Dark Iron 0.522 (0.7%)
Void elf 0.498 (1.7%)
Maghar Orc 0.433 (0.6%)
Nightborne 0.339 (1.3%)
Lightborne 0.256 (0.8%)

Human characters 1.1615 (Dark Iron/Void elf/Nightborne/Lightborne) 4 races (4.5%)
Monstrous 0.993 (Mag Orc/High Moun) 2 races (1.3%)

I didn’t include Zand Trolls/Kul Humans due to the reddit user not splitting them up; however, through anecdotal evidence we can assume that their both majority males. Through the conclusion of what I’ve researched in WoW, monstrous males are played almost as similar rates as human looking characters. The buffer monstrous races have more people playing them as individual races then the lanky/short/fat ones. The more human the human characters look the more people will play them. From the looks of it a size difference (Really large or short) and odd skin colors will make people play a human race category character less.

Thanks.

The problem here is what, exactly, is the target demographic? If we look at this charitably, and go by build (hence the underlined picks), yes, you can get it up to 30%, but then the question arises as to why Roegadyn aren't succeeding at capturing these players. Anyone who wants such a build without the bestial face, a la Draenei, would qualify as such. The numbers do not change much if looking at males only. Focusing solely on the build and discounting animal-like facial features, it's around 15% in the case of orcs and draenei males.

From other MMOs, we know that Charr are played to the tune of 13%, Orcs in TESO to the tune of 5% (the figure rises if you add Khajit, but their build and aesthetic is very different both to Roegadyn build in terms of features and Hrothgar in terms of build), no idea what Bless's figures are. Meanwhile, in this game the Roegadyn build already exists for people who are not bothered by playing such a character without embellishments like fangs and we know where its figures sit at.

If we go by having a fur and animal-like faces, we're talking about Tauren, Pandaren and, then, the lankier Worgen. Around 16%, but again, the build is not necessarily going to appeal to that demographic as a whole, due to disparities between the three. So now we're looking at 10% or so, but let's say 16% for argument's sake, and I'll bump that to 20% when considering males only. I think this is really the figure that most closely approximates demand for Hrothgar-type races in WoW.

Then you have to further drill down into these figures and consider what subset of these players are a) solely put off XIV due to the absence of a bestial race, and would play it if that impediment were removed AND b) are not bothered so much by how much of a lore presence the race has, since in WoW's case we're comparing to races with a significant presence dating to WC3 in most cases AND c) like the build and aesthetic SE devise. I.e. people who simply want a bestial aesthetic and are happy with the build.

How much lower is that than 37%, 30%, 20%, 16%, or 10%, depending on how you slice this up? In turn, how much would that skew demand away from where the stats currently lie in FFXIV? We don't really know that, without knowing what subset of those "refugees" will be attracted by this move, and also have to account for some cannibalisation of the Roe figures as they move to the newer race, which may result in them being played to a much greater extent but not necessarily due to new player additions. I will throw in one further confounding factor - WoW has a much more cartoonish aesthetic than XIV, so simply transposing what works in it to XIV, with its more "realistic" look, will not necessarily have the same results. There is also the fact that alts are much more prevalent on it than in this game, as those figures give the realm population distribution, whereas in FFXIV we're mostly talking about actively played characters. All of this casts doubt on whether the figures would rise to WoW's levels, however you slice it up.

I personally don't doubt that Hrothgar will do better than Roegadyn (and we will only know several months after 5.0 is out), but the claim being made by some here is that they would be more popular than mViera, which is entirely contingent on the build SE opts for and tweaks it makes to it, enough so for me to dismiss any blanket assertions to the effect about mHrothgar being more popular than mViera as nonsense, particularly when the argument is simply premised on demand based on other games. It all comes down to what design SE chooses to implement for them.

[Renthas]

Roes aren't succeeding cause of their super weird proportions. That's what I think, at least. I, for one, am very excited to fantasia to a male Hrothgar.

[zeylos]

Roes aren't succeeding cause of their super weird proportions. That's what I think, at least. I, for one, am very excited to fantasia to a male Hrothgar.

Hrotgar will be popular the first 2 or 3 weeks. Then they'll probs be around male elezen.
Ppl just want to be a model, and most ppl playing this game Don like Roe body type. If they had gone for Highlanders male body type, they'd be 5 times more popular. Also their animations are really disappointing

[Skivvy]

Roes aren't succeeding cause of their super weird proportions. That's what I think, at least. I, for one, am very excited to fantasia to a male Hrothgar.

I'd say it's because XIV chopped off their tails generations ago. :P

[zeylos]

I'd say it's because XIV chopped off their tails generations ago. :P

LOL I agree on that.
Roegadyns would be a lot cooler if they weren't so humanish, and they were more like an orc or had something to define them.
I like hrotgar million times more than roegadyn, but I will not make one since I don't like neither their animations or their body type

[SomeRandomHuman]

I'm in favor of this sort of body type. I'm not against them being taller than depicted here, but this is def the general body shape my vote is for. Svelte, still masculine, but not bulky.