New Races

[Yencat]

This was before ShB. Viera and Hrothgar were never supposed to happen. However since SE dug themselves into this hole, they have to get out of it. So they will add the other genders.

Do you have a source for that? I only ever saw them say they were not adding more races after ShB, never before, but it's possible I missed it.

[EtherRose]

Do you have a source for that? I only ever saw them say they were not adding more races after ShB, never before, but it's possible I missed it.

I would have to find it. If i remember correctly it was around the time of Stormblood expansion. It was during one of those live letters/questions asked. It's also why a race wasn't added for Stormblood.

[wereotter]

I would have to find it. If i remember correctly it was around the time of Stormblood expansion. It was during one of those live letters/questions asked. It's also why a race wasn't added for Stormblood.

I recall something to this end too, though it wasn't that the races weren't supposed to happen, but that the idea initially was to only make hrothgar, but after they got the green light to add Fran to the Ivalice 24-man raids, they knew there would be a sizable number of players disappointed that after seeing an in-game viera model, they wouldn't be a playable race, so they scrapped female hrothgar to make viera instead.

[Amnmaat]

They said they would add them if they "can find a way around the QA (quality assurance) and operational issues." It's all a matter of how much value the missing genders bring to Square enix in the next expansion and how it would hurt the next expansion without it. I'll be honest, Stormblood fanfest and the expansion itself didn't have that much hype; it was the first time people were questioning if paying for fanfest to reveal 1 job and half a trailer was worth the ticket.

[elioaiko]

Personally I think the limiting factor on Viera and especially Hrothgar with the hair issue is pretty jarring.

Like someone else said, it was probably their last chance at adding new races so they did half and half to appeal to two crowds. In turn though, they ended up making limited races since they get no new headgear and hairstyles are solely lacking.

I would have liked them to just have focused on one race and have a finished one rather than two with missing genders.

The missing gender thing was a hot topic as well since they said "lore" but in reality, they didn't have time to finish/undecided the other genders. However their excuse also less people to believe that for reason they're taking lore into consideration when it typically does not.

I mean it's already lore breaking with all these Vieras leaving the woods and nevermind all the cat boy to cat girl ratio not lining up as well. Of course they didn't want to say "we don't have time" because that would admit to failure or lacking support in their part. If they couldn't handle the load of new races, I would have rathered them taken more time to work on them and save them for the next expansion

The whole Viera/Hrothgar situation is weird because they're so nice looking (especially Viera), but they're so lacking in customization and they haven't done anything for them since release.

My guess is that they might use the missing genders as a selling point for 6.0. And Yoshi-P is pretty clever with his words since he said "this might be the last race" but he didn't say that the missing genders wouldn't be implemented. Not to get our hopes up since the two races now are in a pretty grim state but it wouldn't surprise me if they did release them in 6.0.