Why genderlocking is a concern.

[Meili]

I want to preface this by saying that I greatly appreciate the effort and time that was put into creating a beautiful trailer, amazing new areas, and creatively reusing old assets in a way that I would never have imagined. So much care was put into so many aspects of this release and I thank all of the devs, and the staff as a whole, for their work.

Naturally though, I and countless others take issue with the choice to genderlock the two new races, Viera (female) and Hrothgar (male).

The two primary concerns that I have are these: First, it feels very exclusionary. A lot of people who create a character do so wanting that character to reflect themselves in some way or another, they want that avatar to feel relatable. And on the flip side, some people want to see something of what they want to be in their avatar. Gender and/or race are often a major way in which people do achieve this and this shuts that down for so many of your players, both current and future. If the issue was a lack of available resources to create the opposing genders for each race, that is understandable, there is only so much time and money available to the FFXIV team. However, any kind of assurance that this was the reason and that the gender limitations are not final would have made a world of difference for so many people.

Second, it sets a worrying precedent. If the choice would have been made regardless of available resources, when so many people were hoping for both genders to be available for various reasons, I worry that it will mean further exclusion in the future and perhaps influence other game developers to follow suit.

When speaking on this topic I speak from the perspective of a gay man. I want to say this because I feel it will better help those who read this to understand where *I* am coming from, I felt that I could relate to what the male viera could have been, but my disappointment and my concerns are shared by individuals in all communities. Women and men; lesbian, gay, straight, bi, trans; across the spectrum we are concerned.

There is no argument when it comes to FFXIV's popularity and influence within the market, this game has been a trendsetter in the past and has withstood the test of time as a subscription based MMO, it's a practical unicorn in those respects. So I hope that those devs and leaders across the teams — design, localization, everyone — see this and are able to put themselves in our shoes. I hope that they can see why we are concerned and why we're nervous about this decision.

Thank you very much for your time and your consideration.

[Kaedan]

There's no such thing as genderlocking. You can roleplay as any gender you want, regardless of physical sex. You could play a Viera and identify as masculine or any number of the gender spectrum no problem at all.

[Granyala]

Just because our human culture is inclusive to the very extremes of hilarity, does not mean that cultures of fantasy races have to be.
I welcome the boldness of doing this, even though I won't ever play any different character myself.

[Destati]

There's no such thing as genderlocking. You can roleplay as any gender you want, regardless of physical sex. You could play a Viera and identify as masculine or any number of the gender spectrum no problem at all.

In the plethora of threads relating to this subject I've been struggling to find a good place to post this but thanks to this comment I feel I've found it.
There is a reason why I exclusively play male characters. This may sound stupid, but I feel that my own dysphoria is aggravated whenever I try to play females.
Yes, while I very well could make a Viera and play them as male, I can't see the customization options being workable enough to make them seemingly masculine. I could set the bust slider to 0, but obviously it won't eliminate it completely. It will still be there and serve as a continuous reminder that the character is something that they are not.
I really want(ed) to play a male Viera, and it seriously hurts that I won't have that option.

[manickitty]

There's no such thing as genderlocking. You can roleplay as any gender you want, regardless of physical sex. You could play a Viera and identify as masculine or any number of the gender spectrum no problem at all.

Out of all the comments on this topic I’ve read so far, this has to be the worst.

How about we delete your preferred race/gender and you roleplay as it instead?

Heck let’s delete all races and genders and just have a tposed greybox humanoid so you can “identify” as whatever you want?