(12-22-2014, 11:24 PM)Zyrusticae Wrote:(12-22-2014, 11:07 PM)Flickering Ember Wrote: For all we know though, Final Fantasy XIV's target audience, Japan, could think it is amazing. I mean, I am disappointed but I was expecting for them to be pretty. My honest impression is that the Japanese players probably wouldn't like any race that wasn't pretty. Judging from anime and Japanese RPG's, they don't really do sympathetic non-pretty characters. Attractiveness goes a long way towards a character's popularity.But this is a fallacy.
Puppies and cats are universally loved and adored for their cuteness. They are not even remotely human.
For an actually extant race example, Asura are also super-cute and very obviously not human:
Argonians can be made very cute as well:
Attractiveness does not require humanity whatsoever. We find pleeenty of things attractive that have only the barest similarities to humanity (as in bilateral symmetry, eyes, nose, mouth, etc.). This is why I am utterly convinced that just throwing on a couple of non-human features on top of a human template is laziness.
While I agree, they are cute, I don't know if a lot of other people would find them cute. Neither of those races were made for Japanese audiences in mind. The Japanese concept of cuteness is different. I don't want to generalize too much because I don't live in their culture. But going off of all their forms of entertainment that I have gotten to interact with, beauty plays a very important role. The Western idea of beauty can often times be much more rugged, even for females.