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Flickering Ember · **12-21-2014, 09:24 PM**

(12-21-2014, 07:11 PM)Clover Wrote: Well, no other race in FFXIV has very different males and females, so this one isÂ different thanÂ the rest for that reason.

Naturally, females followÂ Japanese beauty standards, which is expected (and in my case, appreciated).

I know that many Western games go wild when creating different races, butÂ those are created under aÂ completely different mindset. I personally don't like the way characters look in Western games, even less the non humanoid ones. People might find the plants race from GW2 interesting, but I wouldn'tÂ dare to touchÂ them with a stick.

So,Â FF is a Japanese game, and as such it will follow its own beauty standards, and it's own standards of what's interesting and what's not. It is not the Western standard, which doesn't mean that it's *bad*; that's what I'm trying to say. If that race exists it's because there are tons of people who love that kind of design, and I personally don't find any appeal in the way people have described how they'd like the race to be.

I prefer the aesthetics of Western games but I find both Western and Eastern games are problematic. I like how Western games design their races and their female characters, but they also have very little fan service for female fans and very few prominent female characters. On the other hand, I don't like how pretty and fanservicey the female characters are in Eastern games, but female characters get to play more prominent roles.

I am definitely the type who appreciates the GW2 races. However, the problem is that I have played GW2 and I just didn't like it. I didn't like the game. I don't really like the races of this game, but I love the actual gameplay of it. Just giving you some insight on why someone who is not really a fan of the Eastern aesthetic is playing a game with it. I had more fun in the first few months of playing this game than I did the entire year+ I was in GW2. (And I am still having a lot of fun)

Fortunately, I was at least able to get into roegadyns. But I had been holding onto a hope that they would introduce a race that I could really, genuinely like.

The problem I have with their large male, small female design is that I have seen it in so many of other fantasy games and animation. Roegadyns have some pretty unfortunate sexual dimorphism too, but at least the women have some musculature and stature to them. I would never fault another woman for preferring to be represented by prettier avatars. The problem I face is that as a woman who prefers female avatars to be more unconventional is that I am often felt left out.

It's not even that I want to always have a badass, muscular female to play. It's that I would like for the males and females of fantasy races to look like they are from the same species. It always feels like the male characters have all the identifying features of the fantasy race while the female is more of an offshoot. She doesn't get to have the same features that the males do. The problem with that is that these features the male characters get are what make that particular fantasy race iconic.

At the end of the day, pretty much every fantasy race that can be can played across all games resemble humans. However, the more a race is defined by typically masculine attributes, the less identity the female has of that race. I am speaking in a broad sense here because as you pointed out, the races in this game don't have that degree of sexual dimorphism. And even Au Ra are not as bad as some other fantasy races out there. What I am saying though, is that the reason why I don't want to see it in this game, is that I am already tired of this trope that I have seen from the majority of other games.

TL;DR large males and small females is a tired trope.

And I would like to have more female options than "pretty girl, hooker girl, cute girl, petite girl, fragile-wallflower girl, elf girl" etc. in my games. I wasn't expecting for SE to make anything ground breaking, but I was at least hoping for the females to look just as iconic as the males.

K'nahli · **12-21-2014, 09:27 PM**

(12-21-2014, 08:34 PM)Tiergan Wrote: From what I can see, there are two clans just like there are with all the other races. Â I'm really hoping SE decides to make one of the Au Ra clan females more mature and refined with more obvious horns/scales while the other can be more cutesy and child-like to appeal to a wider sense of taste. Â It'll kind of suck if it's just a color swap.

Howwww did I not notice this?! What a ridiculous oversight that was, hahaha. That makes a lot more sense. The dual-clan thing just went completely over my head.

As far as males go at least, I like the "Sunseekers", but whether I make a male(or an Au Ra at all for that matter) is still an uncertainty for me. I'd like to have made one with my friend but she'll have an unrelated RP story with another group of people and I don't feel partial to RP'ing out in the wild with strangers, so that demotivates me a little, haha.

Quote:Flickering Ember

I prefer the aesthetics of Western games but I find both Western and Eastern games are problematic. I like how Western games design their races and their female characters, but they also have very little fan service for female fans and very few prominent female characters. On the other hand, I don't like how pretty and fanservicey the female characters are in Eastern games, but female characters get to play more prominent roles.

I am definitely the type who appreciates the GW2 races. However, the problem is that I have played GW2 and I just didn't like it. I didn't like the game. I don't really like the races of this game, but I love the actual gameplay of it. Just giving you some insight on why someone who is not really a fan of the Eastern aesthetic is playing a game with it. I had more fun in the first few months of playing this game than I did the entire year+ I was in GW2. (And I am still having a lot of fun)

Fortunately, I was at least able to get into roegadyns. But I had been holding onto a hope that they would introduce a race that I could really, genuinely like.

The problem I have with their large male, small female design is that I have seen it in so many of other fantasy games and animation. Roegadyns have some pretty unfortunate sexual dimorphism too, but at least the women have some musculature and stature to them. I would never fault another woman for preferring to be represented by prettier avatars. The problem I face is that as a woman who prefers female avatars to be more unconventional is that I am often felt left out.

It's not even that I want to always have a badass, muscular female to play. It's that I would like for the males and females of fantasy races to look like they are from the same species. It always feels like the male characters have all the identifying features of the fantasy race while the female is more of an offshoot. She doesn't get to have the same features that the males do. The problem with that is that these features the male characters get are what make that particular fantasy race iconic.

At the end of the day, pretty much every fantasy race that can be can played across all games resemble humans. However, the more a race is defined by typically masculine attributes, the less identity the female has of that race. I am speaking in a broad sense here because as you pointed out, the races in this game don't have that degree of sexual dimorphism. And even Au Ra are not as bad as some other fantasy races out there. What I am saying though, is that the reason why I don't want to see it in this game, is that I am already tired of this trope that I have seen from the majority of other games.

TL;DR large males and small females is a tired trope.

And I would like to have more female options than "pretty girl, hooker girl, cute girl, petite girl, fragile-wallflower girl, elf girl" etc. in my games. I wasn't expecting for SE to make anything ground breaking, but I was at least hoping for the females to look just as iconic as the males.

I have not played a LOT of online games but I can imagine how disappointing it must be. While I like the females of this new race I would definitely like to have seen a more feral type as well. The only way to really address this issue is to, of course, have a better character customization system so it can cater to a lot more preferences than just a particular type of person. FFXIV has some really beautiful models and I am very happy with my own characters as well as my friends' characters, but I will never say that the character creator is anything more than something "that gets the job done".

Kismet · **12-21-2014, 09:49 PM**

(12-21-2014, 05:32 PM)Oli! Wrote: Oh god what did I start

I admit that moment I saw you put up this thread, I knew it was going to turn sour at some point.Â Laugh

Â Luckily, it hasn't gotten too bad...

...yet.

Chlodomer · **12-21-2014, 10:03 PM**

(12-21-2014, 06:46 PM)Ashren Snow Wrote:

I thought this was a random photoshop image of two male elezens and two female miqo'tes.

It looks like, I was wrong.

I find it funny how the blue-ish dude in the left has a familiar looking roegadyn face.

Zyrusticae · **12-21-2014, 10:28 PM**

(12-21-2014, 09:24 PM)Flickering Ember Wrote: The problem I face is that as a woman who prefers female avatars to be more unconventional is that I am often felt left out.

I KNOW THAT FEEL.

I like to play female characters that look like this and this. They're hardly conventionally attractive female characters and that makes it exceedingly difficult to find games that really support my choices.

Of course, in FFXIV's case a lot of this can be chalked up to the game's rather sub-par character creation. With the only body slider being for breast size and the available variations for facial features being so limited it's no wonder it's so hard to make a character that's actually visually distinct from everyone else. If the character creation were better we could have our cake and eat it, too (i.e. the females of the new race could be small and dainty OR large and in charge at the same time because the breadth of options is there, as opposed to the current situation where you're just stuck with what you get).

Unfortunately, if you want that it seems more likely that we'd have to wait for FFXVII (or whatever the next 'online' FF game would be numbered as) to hopefully get it right the first time, as it's just too late for them to overhaul the character creation now. A damn shame, really. It's one of my very few major gripes with the game as it stands. Maybe after they drop PS3 support... one can dream, eh?

Naunet · **12-21-2014, 10:42 PM**

(12-21-2014, 10:28 PM)Zyrusticae Wrote: Of course, in FFXIV's case a lot of this can be chalked up to the game's rather sub-par character creation. With the only body slider being for breast size and the available variations for facial features being so limited it's no wonder it's so hard to make a character that's actually visually distinct from everyone else.

There's a lot of truth to this.

But yeah... one can dream.

Caspar · **12-21-2014, 11:44 PM**

"All right."
>"Not interested."

Elysia · **12-22-2014, 01:41 AM**

(12-21-2014, 09:24 PM)Flickering Ember Wrote: It's not even that I want to always have a badass, muscular female to play. It's that I would like for the males and females of fantasy races to look like they are from the same species. It always feels like the male characters have all the identifying features of the fantasy race while the female is more of an offshoot. She doesn't get to have the same features that the males do. The problem with that is that these features the male characters get are what make that particular fantasy race iconic.

At the end of the day, pretty much every fantasy race that can be can played across all games resemble humans. However, the more a race is defined by typically masculine attributes, the less identity the female has of that race. I am speaking in a broad sense here because as you pointed out, the races in this game don't have that degree of sexual dimorphism. And even Au Ra are not as bad as some other fantasy races out there. What I am saying though, is that the reason why I don't want to see it in this game, is that I am already tired of this trope that I have seen from the majority of other games.

TL;DR large males and small females is a tired trope.

And I would like to have more female options than "pretty girl, hooker girl, cute girl, petite girl, fragile-wallflower girl, elf girl" etc. in my games. I wasn't expecting for SE to make anything ground breaking, but I was at least hoping for the females to look just as iconic as the males.

"However, the more a race is defined by typically masculine attributes, the less identity the female has of that race."

<slow applause>

These were my thoughts when I saw the footage. What really got my goat, though, were the typical cute, flirtish mannerisms exhibited in their emotes.Â Haven't we exhausted this via the Miqo'tes and the Hyur Midlanders?

That said, I think this sexual dimorphism has plenty of subversive potential for the RPers from an anthropological (?) perspective. It'd be interesting to consider if their difference in body shape could've been the result of some nasty evolutionary necessities sometime along in the past, and the implications of this might still be seen / felt today in Au Ra society. I'd love to see female Au Ra NPCs working against this, I do, and loreeeee, but I'd better not get my hopes up. (Coerthas was also disappointing in this aspect.)

Haven's Fox · **12-22-2014, 02:13 AM**

Wanna see the lore on them and more importantly... The animations for the emotes!

Jana · **12-22-2014, 02:39 AM**

Honestly, I thought the patchy scales kind of showed that the Au Ra might not be all that closely linked to dragons. If the lore for them does end up being descended from a dragon + Shiva's offspring, it would make sense for the dragon blood to get "watered down" over time, leaving them with more humanoid features.

g0ne · **12-22-2014, 03:15 AM**

Are me and Clover the only ones who are actually happy about the Au Ra?Â Undecided

Tiergan · **12-22-2014, 03:25 AM**

(12-22-2014, 03:15 AM)Eleni Wrote: Are me and Clover the only ones who are actually happy about the Au Ra?Â

Not at all. I've seen tooooons of fans of the female Au Ra all over the net and on Tumblr. Don't feel discouraged.

Just because other folks don't fancy them doesn't mean either of you two should feel bad about liking them or rolling one up. Hell, I'm 90% sure that a massive, massive chunk of the miqo'te population is probably going to fantasia when the expansion hits.

T'shina · **12-22-2014, 03:31 AM**

I'm excited for the Au Ra. I wonder how many horn options there are and what kind of skin tone options there will be.

I like how they made the males look kind of like Elezen but yet they have a muscular tone to them. And the random patches of scales are nice.

Due to lore it would be hard for them to make a beast tribe playable so they had to make them pretty humanoid which is what I expected.

And then! I can't wait to see the Ishgardian players go crazy because the "Dravanians" are around!

Kismet · **12-22-2014, 04:07 AM**

(12-22-2014, 03:15 AM)Eleni Wrote: Are me and Clover the only ones who are actually happy about the Au Ra?Â

As I said in my first few posts, I really want to make one and I like them. There are things about them I dearly wish were different, but my bearing feelings of that nature are not exclusive to the Au Ra.

For example... Even though my main is a Miqo'te, I have tons of issues with them. I'm not fond of how cutesy Hyur females are, I hate how Elezen have little pea heads, I wish Roes could have Merlwyb's face/animations... I could go on for pages/hours.

But that doesn't mean I don't love any of those races, not for a second. Like a terrible movie or some greasy food, I can acknowledge its flaws if I want to and still adore it.

Ashren Dotharl · **12-22-2014, 04:12 AM**

(12-22-2014, 03:15 AM)Eleni Wrote: Are me and Clover the only ones who are actually happy about the Au Ra?Â

Nope, I already bought a fantasia potion in preparation for changing when the expac comes out. I absolutely love everything about them (appearance wise) so far. I also have a friend who literally bought the game yesterday because I showed her the pics of the Au Ra.

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Thoughts on the Au Ra?

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