Since Lore Suddenly Matters

[Rocl]

Since Viera are established in the Final Fantasy games already, Yoshi-P may not have even had a choice in the matter.
Even if we did, we got an entirely different race, which is awesome, and adds a lot of variety to the world when people chose to play these.

I don't buy this when they literally just wrote new Lore regarding male Viera for 4.5 and when asked on twitter Matsuno denied having any say in the matter. Unless we're to believe Square Enix the company vetoed it. (Someone with better japanese skills can suss out the particulars if I'm wrong, but it sounded like Korean users were upset and spreading a rumour that Matsuno was against adding male viera and he denies it.)

https://twitter.com/YasumiMatsuno/st...97812078891008

I'm not particularly mad that viera themselves are gender-locked, but that any race is gender-locked is lame to me. Give me big burly leonine women too--I just can't understand the decision behind it. "It saves development time!" feels short when they could've just not done two races and only done one. Now it'll forever feel like the races are incomplete, to me at least. If we get some lore reveals about Hrothgar about why there's no women, I'll gladly eat my words, but I can't think of anything that'd fit the setting other than, like, XI-style galka asexuality, which is kind of like "why even call them dudes" at that point.

I also feel like I need a big disclaimer that I was overwhelmingly disappointed with this keynote so that may colour my judgement on the matter.

[Astarotha]

the issue there is even if they had matsunos blessing and help the act of showing 14s version of a male viera (even if explicitly stated this was not an ivalician viera) would be applied by the community retroactively to what ivalician viera look like and muddle some of the mystery surrounding them in those games, if they couldve maybe swapped the names and have source be viis and first be viera with the more traditional outlook MAYBE that wouldve meshed better, but there are roundabout lore implications that would affect 12 and ffta that i think ultimately caused their decision to be one where they didnt step on matsunos toes

[Veritas-Ancora]

Male Viera

If you're angry about Male Viera not being available in the game, there's over 29 pages of complaints within less than half a day (I didn't make it, but bless the person who did).

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...support/page29

Let's get it up over 50 and make it known that gender stereotypes aren't cool to reflect in race.

[DJMau]

They don't look Elezen, they look tall but they definitely don't have the really awkward necks. Tall =/= Elezen

Neither does Big = Roe

[QT_Melon]

Neither does Big = Roe

Neither does Hthrogar = Ronso but they made that connection.

Because they don't look anything like the ones in X but here we are worried about Viera being close to the ones in 12?

[Daralii]

Neither does Hthrogar = Ronso but they made that connection.

Because they don't look anything like the ones in X but here we are worried about Viera being close to the ones in 12?

One of the Hrothgar clans has a horn, and this was a slide from the keynote:



They're Ronso with a slight hunch and more muscle.

[QT_Melon]

One of the Hrothgar clans has a horn, and this was a slide from the keynote:


They're Ronso with a slight hunch and more muscle.

No they're just a boring cut and paste body type of Galka 1.0 instead of at least trying to make them more interesting and change the body types by clan. Ronso have different builds that's my point.

I mean you can paint Will Smith Blue and CG in Genie features but it has to be a convincing translation, and that was my point about the Ronso they aren't.

[LineageRazor]

No they're just a boring cut and paste body type of Galka 1.0 instead of at least trying to make them more interesting and change the body types by clan. Ronso have different builds that's my point.

I mean you can paint Will Smith Blue and CG in Genie features but it has to be a convincing translation, and that was my point about the Ronso they aren't.

With the exception of Au Ra, ALL of the races in FFXIV are interpretations of races from other games. Hrothgar aren't Ronso any more than Roegadyn are Galka. They are inspired by Ronso, sure, and with the right customization options can look very similar to Ronso, but bottom line, they are their own race.

Viera being so very similar to FFXII's Viera (even keeping the same name!) is the EXCEPTION, not the norm, and very likely the decision to make them exact copies was due to perceived fan demand. They had a lot more flexibility with the Hrothgar, because they were less likely to cause an uproar with every little change they made to the original Ronso design. (There was an uproar, sure, but it's not about how non-Ronso-y the Hrothgar are...)

[DRKoftheAzure]

Time constraints is the only justifiable defense at this point... It's just another "wait and see" approach...

[Wyssahtyn]

OP, some of your points fall flat even if you're trying to say your list is being ridiculous, though I realise this probably got moved from General Discussion or something. Specifically, 3, the glamour part of 4, 8 and 10.

3. There's nothing lore unfriendly or unimmersive about hiring servants to perform menial tasks for you. Which is basically what retainers do. You'd have a better argument for saying they should adjust their loot tables to remove stuff like the primal weapons.

4. Glamours have been a thing since at least 2.0. Several levequests involve you acquiring items to dispel the glamours of some beast or another, typically voidsent. Heck, they're noted even as recently as 4.0's MSQ with the entrances to Rhalgr's Reach.

8. Garlean enemies that use magic are typically conscripts, and are therefore not racially Garlean. Like, the only possible example of a pureblood Garlean using magic that I can think of is Lucia maybe using the final blade beam-esque attack of Rage of Halone against a dragon in the Final Steps of Faith battle cutscene.

10. Hellsguard Roegadyn are noted for producing great mages as well as warriors.