Why FFXIV is The Best

[Zsolen]

The WoL is always an outlier. I can't repeat this enough. The WoL is this strange adventurer that belongs nowhere, isn't of any race in particular (hence why you can be a Duskwight and waltz into Gridania, or a Male Moonkeeper), and comes from nowhere at a vague point in time 5 years after the Calamity. The WoL has no lore to tie him down except coming to Eorzea for whatever reason, and being one of Hydaelin's many chosen, and she can damn well choose a Male Viera or a Female Hrothgar. Other Adventurers are not canonical to the Lore, hence why there can be 2 (6 in an alliance) non-padjali White Mages in one party, or 4 Summoners, or 4 Black Mages, or 2 Scholars.

Maybe read what I wrote? All the people that also choose that gender and race are still considered part of your world, but they are simply adventurers in your eyes. They still exist. Even if they are seen as a class, instead (f need be). But you can't assume they are a different race or gender. Also a male Viera likely wouldn't heed any call like that anyway.

[strawberrycake11]

It is not bad plain and simple. You don't get quality if you keep changing your own lore. Star Wars did that. It created a weird unwieldy EU for a long time with some of it god and some of it really bad. If SE implemented male Viera as a playable race, it would be lowering their standard.

Also, I remember people asking for Ronso or a more bestial race.

You asked for Viera and got it. It's a race where we only ever see the females for lore reasons. As a result, we ended up with male only Ronso to balance it out. It's really not that complicated.

I said, perhaps with too many words, that choosing to do two gender-locked races is a breaking a promise, breaching trust, and lowering overall quality and credibility. That in and of itself is a bad thing, especially given how it has all been handled. You would disagree with that?

I am not talking about lore at all. If I'm being honest, I personally didn't want viera to begin with, because they are a race from Ivalice that has been somehow magically transplanted to another world called Hydaelyn because fans like them, where they did not originate from and do not belong, and that sounds pretty against the lore to me. But, lore aside, they went back on their word and are changing something that is a staple of the game, that made it unique, and are releasing something that is lower quality than previously. Full stop.

[Zsolen]

I said, perhaps with too many words, that choosing to do two gender-locked races is a breaking a promise, breaching trust, and lowering overall quality and credibility. That in and of itself is a bad thing, especially given how it has all been handled. You would disagree with that?

I am not talking about lore at all. If I'm being honest, I personally didn't want viera to begin with, because they are a race from Ivalice that has been somehow magically transplanted to another world called Hydaelyn because fans like them, where they did not originate from and do not belong, and that sounds pretty against the lore to me. But, lore aside, they went back on their word and are changing something that is a staple of the game, that made it unique, and are releasing something that is lower quality than previously. Full stop.

You say it is lower quality to have genderlock, but I told you why is was the opposite with actual reasoning. Lore. You have to talk about lore, if you want to have a proper counter-argument. These are not the same Viera from Ivalice, but they carry similar lore. If you cannot address that, then you cannot make a proper counter-argument.

We need to do more to help lore, and not bash it in continually. That is a problem this game has from time to time, but it manages it mostly okay overall. It shouldn't be removed, because someone has a political agenda, fetish (despite not knowing what they even look like), or whatever the case is.

[strawberrycake11]

You say it is lower quality to have genderlock, but I told you why is was the opposite with actual reasoning. Lore. You have to talk about lore, if you want to have a proper counter-argument. These are not the same Viera from Ivalice, but they carry similar lore. If you cannot address that, then you cannot make a proper counter-argument.

We need to do more to help lore, and not bash it in continually. That is a problem this game has from time to time, but it manages it mostly okay overall. It shouldn't be removed, because someone has a political agenda, fetish (despite not knowing what they even look like), or whatever the case is.

No, I really don't need to address lore. Because telling the people that play your game one thing and then doing the exact opposite of that thing years later is a Bad Thing. That's it! Take everything else out the equation. That sentence could be about literally anything in game, but the promise they broke was the one on gender-locking, so that's what's being addressed. If they cared about the promise they made, AND cared about your so-called lore, they wouldn't have made viera playable in the first place.

But if I absolutely must be dragged into talking about lore, I'm sorry, but I'm gonna repeat myself here: according to lore, viera don't live on Hydaelyn. They're from Ivalice. There was no lore reason for them to be here other than the fact that fans wanted them, and the devs said, okay, they can be here now too. If you can disregard that huge lore jump, you can't tell other people that they can't disregard another because it's lore. That's cherrypicking.

Also, male viera have feet. They can walk. They can pull a Fran and skedaddle right out of the woods if they chose too. They're beings with free will. Just because their society has one idea in mind, according to the lore, does not mean every single individual would follow it. That's not how that works. That's not how people work. Female viera leave the forest very rarely as is. Very, very rarely. Really, if they leave in such small numbers, it wouldn't make sense for them to be playable either, would it? And, personally, I think a singular male viera running away from home to see the world is much more believable than an entire race suddenly existing in another world because they're fan favorites.

[R041]

You say it is lower quality to have genderlock, but I told you why is was the opposite with actual reasoning. Lore. You have to talk about lore, if you want to have a proper counter-argument. These are not the same Viera from Ivalice, but they carry similar lore. If you cannot address that, then you cannot make a proper counter-argument.

We need to do more to help lore, and not bash it in continually. That is a problem this game has from time to time, but it manages it mostly okay overall. It shouldn't be removed, because someone has a political agenda, fetish (despite not knowing what they even look like), or whatever the case is.

I don't think 'Lore' should ever be a reason in FFXIV - Let's be honest with ourselves here, the FFXIV world building is pretty bad, it doesn't stand on it's own and mostly just pulls from the other titles as it sees fit, and it's usually just side-notes from a writer that people take as holy writing. Half of the time it makes a mess out of the original IP and just uses it as a Themepark with "Let's throw this ol' FF boss in there" as the initial idea, 'world-building' tacked on.

Hrothgar look nothing like Ronso outside of having the OPTIONS of blue fur and a horn, for Themepark reasons. But then Viera are nearly identical in FFXIV to FFXII?

There's so much picking and choosing for sake of argument, it's moot because this game is 90% themepark random bullshit anyway. There's only one actual deciding factor, it's the Dev Team making non-transparent decisions and acting coy about everything they do. Which only causes frustration and confusion. It's likely due to budget, it's pretty clear that they mostly make developmental decisions that front-load a couple of features leaving little else for the rest of their ideas.

They probably started Viera with good intentions, but quickly found out that doubling the work-load with a male character would be atrocious, so they took an easy option and just made a quarter-baked race to try and ease the pain. Which was still likely decided early on. Or maybe it was originally going to be M/F for both and it was absolutely too much work. Why even bother with concept art if a Lead didn't have any intention of working on it at all? Concept art still takes a lot of time and money away from other projects, which they seem to never have. But that's speculation, you could argue that they were only curious. But even then "Male Viera seem weird" is such a strange reason coming from Final Fantasy, not that I actually believe it but it does kinda seem like the JP crowd might have an image problem if that's a legitimate excuse.

I'm not really in the 'upset with gender-locked' crowd, but I get it. You really have to wonder though, how many more times can SE give the "It's too much work" excuse? Maybe stop releasing half-baked content and actually focus on solid and fully tested features? Maybe stop trying to keep the bleeding edge busy with volatile content that dies out just as quickly as it started? I'd be more worried about beginner retention than anything, it's a creep and they still haven't done much about it.

[Shurrikhan]

Or in the same timeframe, they could have released one complete race instead of two incomplete ones, which arguably would be easier, since you don't have to create lore for two races.

Lore and easily-meshable arts have always outpaced anything remotely to do with code or fitting components to frames. Remember when we got entirely new Primal weapons because it was easier to just make a line new art assets than allow 2h glamours to work on 1h weapons? Meanwhile, every new race has fit precisely upon a prexisting frame. They're not even making any efforts whatsoever to hide that our new Derpcats are just reskinned Roes.

It is not bad plain and simple. You don't get quality if you keep changing your own lore. Star Wars did that. It created a weird unwieldy EU for a long time with some of it god and some of it really bad. If SE implemented male Viera as a playable race, it would be lowering their standard.

Well, it's a good thing we'll never had any quests remotely to do with protecting the forest, since male Viera's role as a wandering protector of their realm is so antithetical to being an adventurer.

Also, I remember people asking for Ronso or a more bestial race.

Yes, right about the time we got a badass concept art for Au Ra and then were given basically-Hyur 3.0 for the females. The males, at least, were reasonably distinct.

You asked for Viera and got it. It's a race where we only ever see the females for lore reasons. As a result, we ended up with male only Ronso to balance it out. It's really not that complicated.

And I'd be fine with that, if they just actually had some variety to the feel of each. As they stand now, it feels like the diversity provided amounts to little more than an added face or two to Aura/Hyur/Elezen females together and Roe males specifically.

If the variety of Viera was just a bit more -- increasing the chance of a stance and face I actually like -- I'd be happy. If the Ronso didn't look stupid as heck when running and had some variety in body shape (as per different clans), rather than just different fur patterns (equivalent to hair color), so that they could be more than just squat furry-Roes, I'd be happy. But at least as present, they're painfully limited, to the point I'd much rather see more customization for the existing races if each additional race is going to curtail future customizations further.

[Selova]

You also dont really realize just how well FFXIV is optimized until you've played other F2P mmos. It's like being stranded in a hot desert suffering from dehydration then coming back to FFXIV and finally coming upon a oasis of ice cold water and shade. It really is a gem in a sea of rubble.

[Zsolen]

Gotta love when people ignore everything a person says and repeats the same talking points. It really is just like politics.

Male viera do not have adventures. It is lore that one type of au ra is nomadic and the other has very few adventurers. Miqo'te are not rare, much more so the females. Yes implementing the males was a bad idea, but we cannot take that back. Eventhen, they can actually be seen in game, because they do not make themselves that scarce, in comparison to male viera. They also do not die off like male viera in their trials or training. Making more mistakes does not make the game better and male miqo'te would not be nearly as bad as male viera.

[WhiteArchmage]

Why would Manqo'tes not be nearly as bad as Viera? It's already been revealed that they wrote that Lore BECAUSE they'd already decided on Female Viera to be the counterpart of Male Hrothgar. There was not 1 Male Miqo'te in 1.0 (Nor Female Roes until they made Merlwyb, and she was made as part of the storyline to set up 2.0) and in 2.x+ there's maybe 4. Koji's already said that the Lore gets bent all the time when the MSQ team gets an idea, or they want to introduce something like BLU, or for side story quests, and it's the Lore team's job to see how they can bend it to excuse that.

There is literally nothing stopping them from saying "Well, the Dramaturge was only talking about the Viera in the Rak'Tika Greatwood, the Male Viera in THIS area do venture forth every once in a while." (And given that we're going dimension-hopping now, there's no one to say that they have the same rules in the First, just look at the Dwarves=Lalafell thing)

You're ignoring what other people say to repeat your own talking points.