Gender-locking isn't sexist

[Lycia]

Lore is a viable excuse, and so far...we have no idea what the actual lore for both races are. The entire problem is that many folks made assumptions during the whole process.

People fantasized about being a male Viera, and when it didn't come to light are now enraged. The fact is, we have a Dev team that has poured serious energy into making a great product. The only reason Viera is in the game is that people begged for it. People begged for BLU, Dev team had no idea if it would work...they gave it to you and you raged.

It's okay to not like certain content coming out. What's not okay is claiming restrictions on your rights, homophobia, sexism and even throwing death threats at someone just because you didn't get your own way

The world doesn't owe you anything. Capitalism gives you the right to support with your dollar. I'm keeping my support. I know there is a petition going around for a change, I ask for those of you who are happy to sign this one, and thank the Dev Team for all the amazing work. http://chng.it/xnBmGTbsfX

[juliet_brave]

Lore is a viable excuse, and so far...we have no idea what the actual lore for both races are. The entire problem is that many folks made assumptions during the whole process.

People fantasized about being a male Viera, and when it didn't come to light are now enraged. The fact is, we have a Dev team that has poured serious energy into making a great product. The only reason Viera is in the game is that people begged for it. People begged for BLU, Dev team had no idea if it would work...they gave it to you and you raged.

It's okay to not like certain content coming out. What's not okay is claiming restrictions on your rights, homophobia, sexism and even throwing death threats at someone just because you didn't get your own way

The world doesn't owe you anything. Capitalism gives you the right to support with your dollar. I'm keeping my support. I know there is a petition going around for a change, I ask for those of you who are happy to sign this one, and thank the Dev Team for all the amazing work. http://chng.it/xnBmGTbsfX

Lore also told us we couldn't play male Miqote and female Roe because they were too rare. XIV cares so much about being faithful to lore that suddenly Ashe and Rasler are siblings in Ivalice. Yeah, ok.

[Metsonm]

Matsuno himself, the guy who is pretty much the authority when it comes to Ivalice lore, including Viera, has distanced himself from the decision to genderlock on twitter.

That to me says that the lore was entirely up for a retcon, much like how the rest of the Ivalice stuff was changed.

Because you have to remember, this isn't strictly the same Ivalice. There can be similarities, but it doesn't have to be a carbon copy of Tactics or XII.

Lore isn't the reason, it's the excuse.

[Felixforever]

im pretty sure they had a really good reason why they chose to do it this way, still does not in any means make the dev team sexist.

[Metsonm]

There are absolutely legitimate reasons, such as time constraints or other technical or design issues. One reason I remember Yoshi cited for not having Viera until now was they couldn't get the feet to work as they wanted, for example. And it seems they just decided that it wasn't as important as just getting them out.

It's just that lore is WAY down on this list and is something not outside of the realm of retcon.

[VirusOnline]

I would not call SE sexist, but I have an issue with using lore as a smokescreen.

The issue with using lore as an excuse is that there already exist so many lore defying things within the game in the forms of content, rewards from in game quests, items from the mogstation, race genders that shouldn't be playable. But you named it rightly so - an excuse. I am sorry, so many things in game that break 'lore' or 'immerson', locking a race because of lore is henceforth not a viable excuse or reason. I only chuckled to myself when the motorcycle became a thing, but I don't go crying 'but mah lore'.

I am not going to start a petition against motorcycles.

I would not inflict that sort of thing upon people who enjoy these things in the game, and I am saddened to see people of the community hurting each other like this whether for or against, or indifferent towards the genderlock. You only hurt each other.

[Vahlnir]

I agree that it isn't sexist. This is definitely a risk for them to take though and was surprised they stepped out of their comfort zone. As far as them sticking to the lore...they can change it as many times as they want. It's their lore. They have also deviated from it in the past as someone mentioned above regarding male Miqos and female Roes. They tend to treat the lore of the game as guidelines more than actual rules so when they say "because lore!" I can't really take them seriously. Blizzard does the same thing with WoW sometimes and I can't take them seriously either. lol

[Selova]

Matsuno himself, the guy who is pretty much the authority when it comes to Ivalice lore, including Viera, has distanced himself from the decision to genderlock on twitter.

That to me says that the lore was entirely up for a retcon, much like how the rest of the Ivalice stuff was changed.

Because you have to remember, this isn't strictly the same Ivalice. There can be similarities, but it doesn't have to be a carbon copy of Tactics or XII.

Lore isn't the reason, it's the excuse.

I imagined that he distanced himself because of FFXII. You said it yourself that there's only similarities, the Viera in FFXIV are not the same Viera that are in XII. The dev's are allowed to come up with whatever lore they decide fits them in this game. Matsuno most likely just didn't want to have to alter the lore in XII just to appease people in XIV, he also probably did it to avoid any backlash that would be coming his way, then again this is pure speculation as is everything until SE comes out and says the reason why.

[DamianFatale]

The definition of sexism is anything that limits, or restricts a gender on the basis of gender roles.

Not letting us play female Hrothgar because they stay at home to protect the children is sexist.

Not letting us play male Viera because they are out in the woods doing stereotypical man stuff is sexist.

[Vahlnir]

The definition of sexism is anything that limits, or restricts a gender on the basis of gender roles.

Not letting us play female Hrothgar because they stay at home to protect the children is sexist.

Not letting us play male Viera because they are out in the woods doing stereotypical man stuff is sexist.

Or they are sticking to their lore. Whether I agree with that decision or not is a whole other thing. Nothing about this is sexist though. Not a darn thing. Like I said in another thread...people need to stop throwing this word around freely. If anything it makes people not take others seriously. Playing different races which have different playable genders in a video game is not the same as true sexism in real life.