A letter to the Devs, Producers, and whoever else has a say

[secretsofthelily]

Hi FFXIV devs, I just really want to voice my concerns that having these two upcoming races genderlocked is a massive step backwards for this game, both in gameplay and general equality. Back when Miqo'te and Roe were genderlocked, fan pressure caused you to rethink it and make them available to both genders, and you promised never to make races genderlocked again, but now you've gone back on your promise.

I just don't understand why you did this. Everyone has been asking for Viera for years, and we were all really excited to see the men after the women were announced, but then you announced the Hrothgar men would replace male Viera, and it really let a lot of fans down. I'm seeing so many people on twitter, tumblr, reddit, discord, the official forums, ect, whose excitement for Shadowbringers has been evaporated by this development choice. Once again in a fantasy game, a sexy beautiful race has been genderlocked to ONLY female, and a strong muscular race has been genderlocked to ONLY male, and gamers are getting tired of it, female gamers especially, as we feel our gender is just being treated as fetish bait. Women always have to be sexy and cute, and men always have to be strong and large, and anything else is "weird". This is what genderlocking races tells us.

We also feel that your excuses for this do not justify it. You say that you can't show the male Viera because of lore, but you MAKE the lore, that's no higher power stopping you from just saying "mostly male viera hide but sometimes they come out". Male miqo'te were the same, you said they were rare but you made them playable anyway and everyone was so happy.

You also say that you left the male Viera out to conserve resources, but you still went ahead and made the Hrothgar anyway, using resources you could have spent on the male viera. Why would you leave two races half-finished when you could have made an entire race with equal resources, disappointing no one? Why couldn't you just choose to do either Viera or Hrothgar?

It's too late now to unmake either race, and I'm not suggesting that, but I am begging you to reconsider and find a way to make both genders available for the races. I'm sure no one will mind if it means the males and females share the same poses, or the female Hrothgar share the same body models as the males, or something.

You guys are capable of more than genderlocking, we know you are. Please bring us male Viera.

[enaykin]

/signed
Please, please, Square. Beyond disappointed right now.

[Endeleon]

Thirded, fourthed, etc etc. This is an insane disappointment.

[Twinsoul]

Excellent post, OP. Very well-worded and well-reasoned. I hope SE sees this.

[Riusvell]

This thread sums up it very nicely.
Please let your voices be heard to let Square Enix and the development team be known that we want the missing female and male of these two races.
We are beyond 1.0, this makes no sense.

[Strika23]

Perfectly said. This is a backwards decision that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Is this really 2019?

[Bongaboi]

Perfectly said. This is a backwards decision that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Is this really 2019?

Yes. Yes. Yes.

[Kallera]

Well said, OP!

Genderlocking was a mistake that should not have been considered, and trying to use the lore as a fig leaf over it only served to needlessly make the viera look bad.

[LeoLupinos]

The worst part of reading this awesome letter is that I know that SE will just make an apology, leaving the thing as it is.
I hoped to do a Viera family with my wife, I guess Viera can't have one, even if both sides want, we can't be the same race, because of lore reasons, lore that they made and could have changed but did chose to use it to justify this cheap business move. That's dirty.

[Astril]

Signed.
Huge disappointment here.