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

[Physic]

to be honest, i think we have enough races, if the cost is as high as it seems. Keep in mind more races=less armor/outfits designed. because every race adds more work to every new armor introduced. More loading times.

are races more important than everything else? especially when they cant look drastically different or they increase costs even more?

[Rufalus]

I disagree with most of the backlash on the forums but this topic is well-written and made with realistic expectations. It'd be interesting if we were polled, to know what percentage of the community would rather have male viera instead of hrothgar.

I think polling ahead of time would be the best way to add races, so that the fans decide what the devs work on and have nobody to blame but themselves. Make it a popularity contest.

Deciding new jobs/roles and limited jobs could be done by player poll too. It would take away some of the surprise from fan fest announcements but the devs still get to decide lots of other stuff by themselves in secret like the story, the world design, new features and battle content.

[Kelryth]

It'd be interesting if we were polled, to know what percentage of the community would rather have male viera instead of hrothgar.

No idea on exact numbers but in the "Male Viera as a playable character! show your support" thread has 1588 likes on the op and currently sits at 2841 posts. What that says is a lot of people want playable Male Viera in some form.

[niteypants]

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

Exactly this. Please allow other people's body-types to be represented. This isn't a 1940s Disney cartoon.

[LyraKuroneko]

No idea on exact numbers but in the "Male Viera as a playable character! show your support" thread has 1588 likes on the op and currently sits at 2841 posts. What that says is a lot of people want playable Male Viera in some form.

Even so it would be unfair to add one and not the other after all this.

[WaterShield]

Even so it would be unfair to add one and not the other after all this.

What's unfair about it?

A small number of people complained and therefore are entitled to receive what they are demanding?

I think this applies to both Male Viera and Female Hrothgar. Nobody is entitled to it and not getting it isn't unfair.

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.

#NotAllGamers

[Kelryth]

A small number of people complained and therefore are entitled to receive what they are demanding?

Don't think of it as demanding. Very few have said they would quit over this. Think of it as expressing an interest in playable Male Viera and Female Hrothgar to Mr. Yoshida and the dev team. If people don't express interest then they wont do it. Simple as that. As a player base we have to tell the devs what we hope for or want or they're just flying blind and hoping for the best. Everything that has come to this game has been from regular players letting the dev team what we'd like to see in game. If we didn't we'd still be playing 1.0 .

[Iscah]

No idea on exact numbers but in the "Male Viera as a playable character! show your support" thread has 1588 likes on the op and currently sits at 2841 posts. What that says is a lot of people want playable Male Viera in some form.

Likes are probably an accurate(ish) count of player interest, for this forum at least, since they're unique per registered account, but the number of posts means nothing. Just a small number of people having a long discussion, and going over the same points a lot, or going off on tangents. Two or three people get into a debate, and you've got another hundred posts.

If anything, you'd be better looking at the stats of how many people posted in the topic, and what their post counts are.

[Kelryth]

well for me, I never use these forums as I keep hitting the post limit and its bloody annoying. So I have 66 posts in 3 threads. Most of which is in the viera thread...lol

[Halivel]

Likes are probably an accurate(ish) count of player interest, for this forum at least, since they're unique per registered account

Agree with this. And looking at amount of likes in main Megathread you can say it is quite loud reaction. Much more loud than it was with Eureka and BLU for example, and it's not like everyone who is interested came on forum so there is definetely more people who worries about this without actual reaction. Forum itself is a minority of community, but it's still the representation of playerbase so using likes on threads as statistic can be more or less accurate.