Information on why the devs didn't include Viera Male/Hrothgar Female

[Emmanellain]

Exactly, genderlocks were never an issue for most people. It's just a convenient cause to advocate for when angling to get male Vieras. If people were seriously against the principle of genderlocking then they would prefer a full Hrothgar race over what we got..

But they are against locks, honestly, back in 1.0 they had the same issue and a lot of players today played the popular Mithra that was fem only back then and cried for males.
and for every locked gear set you always have threads with people getting frustrated about them being locked.
Also you can't fault people for being salty for not getting their elegant bishounen buns, I'm shocked that Yoshi went through with this despite his own dislike towards the locks.
When people advocate for no gender locks, they are literally saying they want two full races, it's a literal win/win for everyone.
Also Viera males have been a subject of mystery since 2006, people grew up with these games that featured Viera, so I think the coy marketing of the races honestly give people cause to be a little dissapointed.
The Hrothgar is strong and masculine, the Viera slender and elegant, they've both been designed with polar opposite design principles, so most players will - regardless of preference be without a female/male counterpart, which wont satisfy either group.
It's like they wanted to please everyone with the last race and wound up pleasing the half that wanted to main that sex of that specific race lol.
They can still turn it around though if they announce they will implement the other half of the sexes down the line.

[Kaedan]

Just a note, that translation is not quite correct. What Yoshida said was that about 3 months after 4.0, they decided to implement Hrothgar. But they also wanted to make Viera. So the choice was between making female Hrothgar, or making female Viera. Meaning if they hadn't decided to make the female Viera, all we would have gotten would have been male and female Hrothgar.


EDIT: Just so you know how I know that, I live in Japan and am fluent in Japanese.

[Neri]

And if SE managed to put in Female Hrothgar, peoplpe will still argue about it as:

1. Why does she resembles Miqote
2. Why is she too beasty

Argument will never end.

[AnnaRosa]

The Director in that interview implied between the lines that the counterparts can be considered IF they have time and $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.
Get it? (They have to meet shareholders profit too) so to unsubscribe is just a way of not getting it.

[Cidel]

really should have just stuck with Hrothgar male and female
either leave viera out or have quenched peoples thirst with a race similar but not really them

This bit sticks out to me. If this has been discussed at length previously, I missed it, but honestly? If they had called the "Viera" in XIV anything else, they no longer are hindered by FFTA/XII's lore. They don't have to be supposedly reclusive, the males aren't essentially ghosts, and they can take liberties without being held to the standard of the established aesthetic of Viera (females). They did it with Hrothgar, being a different race (I am led to believe) than Ronso (though they are called such in-name in the new world/dimension?reality?IDK); they could have just used that other name for Vieras (I don't recall, I can't find that particular slide that revealed Hrothgar and Viera's alternate names) and that would have sidestepped any Viera lore claims from previous games. Seems like the insistence on bringing the actual Viera and not just something similar to them ended up coming with the potential problematic baggage.


But I suppose that could have made Stormblood's Ivalice raid problematic, since Fran.

[Roda]

Source: https://game.watch.impress.co.jp/doc...w/1176157.html
https://www.gamer.ne.jp/news/201903240006/

Q: When did you decide to implement the female-only Viera and male-only Hrothgar?

A: It was during Return to Ivalice, around 3 months after 4.0. Viera was confirmed then, and Hrothgar came about at the same time when we were discussing plans with Matsuno-san. We were deciding whether to make a Hrothgar female or a Viera female, and after selecting Viera, work began right away, because otherwise we wouldn't make it in time. As mentioned before, the face parts are special and Hrothgar has big differences between its faces, like a lion face, wolf face, leopard face. It became a fixed model relatively recently. Viera was done right before Paris Fan Fest, and Hrothgar was done recently.

Points to the inference that they were in a time/cost crunch when developing the races.
People freaking the hell out about the lack of counterparts, you can unclench your intestines now.

Why would I unclench my intestines when 1, the question to not finish either races was even brought up, especially when 2, they were apparently so strapped for time?
So, they're still out of touch and they're still bad at time management. Not really adding anything new to the discourse really...
They even trotted out that excuse of "oh but there's so much more diverse customization options!!! (except for representation for 50% of the world's population of course.)"

My guess is that they don't want to promise something and be expected to held to it. Better to just leave it open so there's no further time constraints, because if you say "a later date" then all you'll get is a hounding WHEN WHEN WHEN. It's probably less stress on both sides to just say it is what it is now and leave it be. People can hope or not hope, but without a definitive date/answer like that, they can't blame SE later if said counterparts still end up clipped.

Implying SE cares about keeping promises...

this means something even WORST in itself: the fact that they lack time and people to work on the game development and they scrap out things for this reason.

I don't know about you, but for me this information it's evern worst, it means this games has a doom clock on it.

It really feels like there's some horrendous efficiency problems internally and it's so rampant it's been normalized in their work culture. I don't think any healthy studio would look at their big ticket feature for their big ticket product and say "ah crap can we just not finish it? and still keep people hyped about it?"

Honestly, I would have preferred they released male and female Hrothgar (Yes, even if it meant not seeing ONE Viera in RtI, I would've complained and grumbled, but silently and eventually accepted that it meant they would work on making them playable later) and held off Viera for later. Gender-locks in general tick me off (since PWI when Male Untamed have a choice between Panda, Lion or Tiger head and Females are cute ladies with fox ears, tails, and OH LOOK!).

Literally this. If hrothgar indeed came first then I would've preferred viera even be a GD BEAST TRIBE in ShaB if it meant I didn't have to deal with this creatively bankrupt genderlocking in the year of our lord 2019.

Except if they were given a hard no by someone higher up after Au Ra stating there wouldn't be any more playable races added in the future, there wouldn't have been any reason to work on it after that point from a professional standpoint. It's entirely possible that the OK to add these 2 new races came completely unexpectedly at a time that didn't leave much time to get the materials made for the fan fest reveals.

Then you wait for 6.0 so you have enough time to produce your content, or you push back your release window if it absolutely must be THIS EXPANSION.

Exactly, genderlocks were never an issue for most people. It's just a convenient cause to advocate for when angling to get male Vieras. If people were seriously against the principle of genderlocking then they would prefer a full Hrothgar race over what we got.

"We want a beastly race" has actually been a topic of conversation over the past two years. I have participated in those threads. I am pleasantly surprised our voices were heard considering the amount of opposition in the past and now.

P-people ARE arguing that, it's just Viera have been teased since HW so most people are invested in that and kind of tunnel visioning.

[Dalmacus]

So the choice was between making female Hrothgar, or making female Viera. Meaning if they hadn't decided to make the female Viera, all we would have gotten would have been male and female Hrothgar.

I don't understand this. Do they not have data or statistics showing that the players wanted viera and it's highly requested race since 2.0, when they did the poll. Why are they hesitating here and doubting of having the choice of between making female Hrothgar or making female viera?

[Physic]

I don't understand this. Do they not have data or statistics showing that the players wanted viera and it's highly requested race since 2.0, when they did the poll. Why are they hesitating here and doubting of having the choice of between making female Hrothgar or making female viera?

not all decisions are based on popularity.

[reivaxe]

I don't understand this. Do they not have data or statistics showing that the players wanted viera and it's highly requested race since 2.0, when they did the poll. Why are they hesitating here and doubting of having the choice of between making female Hrothgar or making female viera?

Of course they know people wanted Viera, clearly people in the company wanted it to seeing how they made concept for it years ago.
But both the devs and fans have been wanting a beastly race (They tried to get that feel with the Scaly folk) and as it stands a beastly race adds something new to the game ... and it seems that with their current workflow they can only add one race ... as in 1 new male with 2 clans and 1 new female with 2 clans.

Doing things this way gives them the beastly race and the Viera.

[J-Reyno]

This means nothing until they come out and verify that the gender counterparts for each race will become available at a future time.

The ball is, has been, and will always be in their court.