You can't "lock" something that doesn't exist.

[Sigma-Astra]

I wonder if anyone has been this upset over Mithra and Galka in the 15+ years that those have been around

People were too upset about Absolute Virtue taking a week or more to kill to care any longer about them I imagine.

[Joven]

wall 'o text

I think the real issue people are having is letting their expectations get the better of them and jumping the gun on the outrage bandwagon. By using a term they knew would generate the most stir they guaranteed people would be talking about this for a long time even after an official decision.

[Alucard135]

Second, You are equating the idea that just because you dont ahve access to something, that the situation being described doesnt exist. Let's think this through a second. IF a race was denied access to a class, but another race had access to that class, Your logic states that you ARENT being class locked by race because you have the opportunity to play that 'feature', you just have to play a different race. Where as most people would point out "What if I want to play x class on A race? Youre not letting me do that." Essentially, youre preventing certain combinations from occuring. In this case, the prevention occuring is Male of a race with all Classes. It's an inverse of that example.

Nope, that is not my logic. The class in this case already exists, in the game. It's animations, build, etc are all available. But it's locked by a gender, hence why it's called genderlocked classes (and that's how the term has been used for a long time along with racelocked classes). But let's look at Viera now. You only have females, but the males don't have a model, or any thing available in game (except their mention in the lore). So by your logic you want to say that Viera are genderlocked because you don't have access to something that doesn't even exist in the game yet. By that logic I can say we're locked from Garlemald, sharlayan or any other location that we don't even know if we'll visit in the future and demand that lock to be lifted and no one should question me and say "but how can they remove the lock if they're not in the game yet?".

Youre also defining features by class and mechanics, and not appearance. Female and Male variations are features. Just like glamour is. Just like dungeons. Just like Classes. Genderlocking by race removes a feature that is available to other races.

I do include appearance in features. But do they exist in the game yet? Let me give you an example. Suppose in 5.x in one MSQ there was a male Viera NPC. In this case, the feature already exists and you're being locked from it by only being able to play as female Viera. But if the only thing we have is literally text on said race and nothing more, and you consider that enough to be called features that you're locked from, then that brings me back to my point of asking for the lock to be lifted from zones that we only know from text also.

No one (well mostly no one) said the lore doesnt exist ....

I might have messed up the lore on LOTR but thanks for pointing out that they don't look exactly like males. Upon reading further on their lore, it seems a lot similar to Viera in terms of how rare you see a female dwarf. According to Tolkien Gateway website "Dwarves wanted their women to be protected from other races and they usually kept them concealed inside their mountain halls. They seldom traveled in the outside world, only in great need, and when they did, they were dressed as men". And in the game you get to only play as male dwarves. Yet all I could find was just a single thread where the word genderlock was used for dwarves by OP and most responses were "females dress as males". So it turns out the term was not commonly used in that context as some say.

Can you fan service a fan by limiting what you give them? Like that is a strange argument to make from a fan point

Yes if what they're getting is at the cost of the actual product's development. Let's say a product includes (X, Y and Z) core components that you're paying for. The developer knew you're interested in a feature β and decided to give it partially to you in a way that minimizes their cost when delivering the product and to ensure that you get X, Y and Z components. In that case, it's natural to be thrilled and happy. But let's assume the developer gave you X and Y only along with β. The first thing that would happen is that you'd ask for component Z. And since it's a core component, it can drastically affect your product's performance. So no one in their right mind would be happy about losing a core component over a side feature.

Since the argument about genderlocking being incorrect revolves around in game assets not existing, that means that same argument states we will never see male viera in game, so were not really expanding on Viera.

Not really, they can still add them if they wanted. There is no need for the use of a term that can't be applied to this case to get the dev team to make them. What needs to be shown to them is demand in the form of likes to a certain thread regarding that topic or asking them to create a poll for that. The fact that we got female Viera is a fact that they're listening. I have no doubt that they will add these two genders later on. But we shouldn't try to force them to do it knowing that it can cost us actual content that we're paying for. One example that comes to mind from the misuse of such terms is one user here that made a thread demanding SE to announce that they're making male Viera as soon as possible. And even in multiple posts stated that they think that SE are going to work on male Viera now and release them in 5.0 or 5.1. At one point that same user said that SE shouldn't do any modification to character creation until they remove the gender lock. So as SendohJin said, they are now sounding entitled.

[Joven]

I've decided that I'm going to create an outrage thread demanding the devs include bait boxes in the next update. I'll threaten to unsub, call them names, misconstrue terms to suit my needs and make unwarranted personal attacks about their beliefs. The whole nine yards. What do you guys think? Think it'll work?

[Fynlar]

Which is defeated by the fact that one choosing to play as Viera will already know that there's only female available to it. Why would you choose to play as them and then complain you're being forced?

Why would that automatically be assumed? Male Viera do exist lore-wise, + they made sure male Miqo'te were playable in this game despite Mithra in FFXI (their obvious inspiration) not having males playable in that game -- and similarly, male Mithra did exist in that game too; one of the expansions even made a big deal out of one.

I'm sure there were a great many people who assumed male Viera would be playable in this game following Miqo'te, and Viera has apparently been in demand for a long while now. So no, I don't think your assumption is as automatic as you think.

You mean restraining classes to certain genders? Because that's what genderlock is.

I feel that a game arbitrarily deciding that a playable race only has one playable gender even when it's clear more than one exists for seemingly no better reason than "we've only ever depicted them as this gender", meaning anyone who wanted to play that race must play that certain gender, also fits the term well enough.

[Penthea]

Unless the game provides indisputable proof that male viera and female hrothgar do not exist in the story, then we can continue to call being unable to play them gender locking. If we can't play a thing that exists in the story, then we're locked out of it. Whether that's male viera, moogles, dragons or The Twelve.

[Joven]

Unless the game provides indisputable proof that male viera and female hrothgar do not exist in the story, then we can continue to call being unable to play them gender locking. If we can't play a thing that exists in the story, then we're locked out of it. Whether that's male viera, moogles, dragons or The Twelve.

Just because they haven't announced them yet doesn't mean they're 'locked', just not created yet. And the other races you stated aren't 'locked' either just because we don't get to play as them. You're really reaching for an argument on this.

[Penthea]

Just because they haven't announced them yet doesn't mean they're 'locked', just not created yet. And the other races you stated aren't 'locked' either just because we don't get to play as them. You're really reaching for an argument on this.

If we can't play something that exists in the story, then we're locked out of it. Why is this simple concept difficult to understand?

[Joven]

If we can't play something that exists in the story, then we're locked out of it. Why is this simple concept difficult to understand?

Why is it so difficult for you to understand that just because something exists in the story it doesn't mean that you get to play as it just because you want it and believe you're entitled to get it?

[Penthea]

Why is it so difficult for you to understand that just because something exists in the story it doesn't mean that you get to play as it just because you want it and believe you're entitled to get it?

Please direct me to where I said I was entitled to or believed I should be able to play anything. You'll find I said no such thing.

I only pointed out that being unable to play as something that exists in the story means that thing is locked. That's it. I said nothing about what I wanted.