(12-23-2014, 01:31 AM)Faye Wrote: Gonna have to agree with this. As a woman myself, I don't understand why everyone is so upset about the female Au Ra being more pretty/small/human looking. Whether a character is bad ass is based on their portrayal and actions, not physical appearance. In a game where we have Highlanders and Roegadyn, I don't really feel slighted in terms of big, bad ass, muscled Amazonian women.

People seem to think it's misogynistic to make female characters dainty, petite and overall feminine. I disagree. Rather, I find it misogynistic to imply that if a woman is dainty, petite, and overall feminine, that she must be weak, or less interesting, or what have you.

Also gonna throw in... if anyone thinks the male Au Ra aren't sexualized eye candy... you are oh so very, very wrong (or maybe just turned off by a little scales and horns).

(12-23-2014, 01:45 AM)Kellach Woods Wrote:

(12-23-2014, 01:31 AM)Faye Wrote: Gonna have to agree with this. As a woman myself, I don't understand why everyone is so upset about the female Au Ra being more pretty/small/human looking. Whether a character is bad ass is based on their portrayal and actions, not physical appearance. In a game where we have Highlanders and Roegadyn, I don't really feel slighted in terms of big, bad ass, muscled Amazonian women.

People seem to think it's misogynistic to make female characters dainty, petite and overall feminine. I disagree. Rather, I find it misogynistic to imply that if a woman is dainty, petite, and overall feminine, that she must be weak, or less interesting, or what have you.

Also gonna throw in... if anyone thinks the male Au Ra aren't sexualized eye candy... you are oh so very, very wrong (or maybe just turned off by a little scales and horns).

I just want it to look like they actually are of the same race.

I mean, we've got roe/lala height difference between the two.

(12-23-2014, 01:45 AM)Kellach Woods Wrote:

(12-23-2014, 01:31 AM)Faye Wrote: Gonna have to agree with this. As a woman myself, I don't understand why everyone is so upset about the female Au Ra being more pretty/small/human looking. Whether a character is bad ass is based on their portrayal and actions, not physical appearance. In a game where we have Highlanders and Roegadyn, I don't really feel slighted in terms of big, bad ass, muscled Amazonian women.

People seem to think it's misogynistic to make female characters dainty, petite and overall feminine. I disagree. Rather, I find it misogynistic to imply that if a woman is dainty, petite, and overall feminine, that she must be weak, or less interesting, or what have you.

Also gonna throw in... if anyone thinks the male Au Ra aren't sexualized eye candy... you are oh so very, very wrong (or maybe just turned off by a little scales and horns).

I just want it to look like they actually are of the same race.

I mean, we've got roe/lala height difference between the two. If it's the biggest dude with the smallest gal, then fine pretty much 80% of my complaints are null and void because even if the horns aren't "big enough" on the gals (and even then I'd wager horn slider can make those suckers real big) that's less of a stretch than, well, the height difference to me.

All the races except Lala are eyecandy to someone.

(12-23-2014, 01:37 AM)Ashren Snow Wrote: FFXIV reportedly has more than 2 million subscribers world wide, and your best argument to show to me that there is more than just a vocal minority of people who don't like them is to show me a few posts that have less than 0.001% of the total user base showing their dislike?

(12-23-2014, 01:49 AM)Faye Wrote: I like the drastic difference! It makes it interesting to me. For all the other races (aside from Lalafells who barely have a difference...), males and females look the same aside from the expected differences (females being slightly smaller, having breasts and obviously more feminine features). It's interesting to finally see a race where the only difference isn't a few inches in height and some curves. And yeah, like Ashren said, I don't think the height difference is quite that extreme.

(12-23-2014, 01:55 AM)Zyrusticae Wrote: As long as the sample size is large enough we can extrapolate the general reception from there.

(12-23-2014, 01:46 AM)Iex Wrote: Before you attempt to present a series of quotes to try to prove that a lot of folks dislike the race and as a 'movement' to change something consider the following:

Lot of people dislike how Miqo'te look.
Lot of people dislike how Elezen look.
Lot of people dislike how Roegadyn look.
Lot of people dislike how Midlanders look.
Lot of people dislike how Highlanders look.
Lot of people dislike how Lalafell look.

Also, on those same commentary from the sites you linked I can find as many positive reactions to the race as well... so it shows that the race has both positive and negative reactions... kind of like how it is for every race?

(12-23-2014, 01:56 AM)Kellach Woods Wrote: Still think they could have marked that difference... differently than just a massive size difference. To tread old ground I'd say that's almost lazy thought

It's pretty much a more extreme interpretation of that very same difference you note : Females are different because they're smaller, have feminine features and breasts. The difference is just more noticed because of the height difference... but it's the same damn thing in the end!

(12-23-2014, 02:06 AM)Zyrusticae Wrote:

(12-23-2014, 01:46 AM)Iex Wrote: Something I said.

The problem here is that the race is... more of the same.

I mean, look, if the next race for 4.0 ends up being more of the same I can guarantee you the negative feedback will be even more concentrated than it is for the Au Ra. Lots of players are very invested into this game yet find themselves feeling underserved by the available options, so naturally they're hoping for something different. The longer they have to wait, the more they keep serving the same niche over and over again, the greater the volume of negative feedback they will receive. It's cumulative.

Certainly, every race has its detractors, but look at how much of the feedback is along the lines of "oh it's a Hyur/Elezen with some scale patches and horns, how staid!" That's something you only get when you're retreading old ground, and boy howdy are they doing that now. We already have 5 races, 10 subraces, of slight variations on humanity, so please forgive me and the rest of the detractors if we're getting gradually more irritated over Square Enix's inability to break out of that very same overused mold.

(12-23-2014, 01:55 AM)Zyrusticae Wrote: I would argue that the male and the female versions of Au Ra should be either different races entirely or at least different sub-races (the latter would actually be really cool because the differences between sub-races as they stand are very minimal) with roughly equivalent male and female versions instead of this huuuge divide.

(12-23-2014, 12:36 AM)Ashren Snow Wrote:

(12-22-2014, 11:40 PM)Flickering Ember Wrote: The Western idea of beauty can often times be much more rugged, even for females.

People tend to be far less critical of what Male characters look like in video games because it's incredibly difficult to go wrong with them. If male characters almost all look the same, or fit into certain stereotypes or follow certain societal standards nobody really gives a shit. If the same thing happens with Female character models people lose their freaking minds over it.

(12-23-2014, 01:19 AM)hauntmedoitagain Wrote:

(12-23-2014, 12:51 AM)Zyrusticae Wrote: This is because there is a ubiquitous trend to make the male characters capable and "badass" while the females are made to be doted on and fawned over.

Quite frankly, it's condescending and super-irritating to be relegated to that kind of role again and again and again and again, so yeah, people (women mostly) WILL lose their shit over it, because it's blatantly and unequivocally sexist.

Who's forcing you into that role other than yourself? It's about how a character acts, not how they appear that defines them in that way. Looks can be incredibly deceiving, or so the cliche goes.

(12-23-2014, 02:51 AM)Flickering Ember Wrote: Oh come on, you can't really think that this:



...gives you the same perception of the character as...



...this. Same character, modeled differently. You can have a waifu girl who can slay bad guys in one hit or defeat men 10 times her size in an arm wrestling match. But it's not nearly as convincing as watching a muscled woman do those things.Who do you think looks more battle hardened? It's not just personality, appearance says a whole lot about a person and how that person is perceived. For example, like it or not, historically role-play characters from small races, such as a lalafell, are not taken as seriously as the taller characters.

You can have a perfectly pretty female character kick a lot of ass (Asami from Legend of Korra) but how they do their ass kicking and how convincing or intimidating that person is comes down to appearance. We can tell, by appearance alone, that Korra from the same franchise fights and behaves a lot differently from Asami.

Differences in art style change how we perceive the character. Like so:
 

In this comparison, we can tell that the first depiction is harsh and intimidating while the second depiction is cute and peaceful. Can you really fault someone for wanting their characters to look as badass as they  portray them?

Your character's appearance: It does affect your roleplay, what other characters think of your character, and what other players think of your character.