Zyrusticae

I'm sorry... I don't recall ever saying Garuda's boobs are too big. I do recall saying something along the lines of her being a bird-creature and as such shouldn't even have boobs to begin with, however. The character you mention is an NPC. The point was to show the graphical quality of the character models, not what I personally prefer. If there's something you're confused about, it's probably the fact that I want options and the ability to express my characters in unusual ways, especially non-gender-conforming ways. Blade & Soul is not perfect in this regard, not by a long shot, but they're still better than Square Enix, especially since they have a race specifically for people like me (the Lyn, who are completely androgynous by default while not being absurdly stylized like the Lalafell are). As a matter of fact... if the Lalafell were more like the Lyn, I probably would be playing one right now. Ho-hum. But that is exclusively tied to the face. A huge part of any character creator is what you can do to the body. Everyone of a particular race-gender combo having the exact same body is just weak, IMO.

With regards to the bolded, I disagree. This is what Blade & Soul's characters look like: Character model quality is a function of art style/direction and technological know-how. Advanced character creation adds to artist workload but it does not necessarily decrease the quality of the models. People keep bringing up Aion but the only reason Aion lets you make such monstrosities is because the sliders have enormous ranges. There is a happy middle ground to be found here (and I would argue Blade & Soul finds a pretty good place). Resources are functionally the exact same thing, really. Either way, we don't actually know the amount of resources required to build these things out. That being said, I would not argue that adding character creation options after the fact is an easy endeavor whatsoever. I know it would be a major undertaking, especially for a game this late in its life cycle (yes, first expansion is pretty late considering most character creators are built waaay before release). However, at the same time it is clear that Blizzard has some serious management issues going on internally. The tiny amount of actual content they release for WoW is hugely at odds with the size of their team and the amount of revenue the game obtains on a regular basis. FFXIV's content schedule completely dwarfs WoW's and that is without considering the expansion content. I believe Squeenix would do a much better job than Blizzard at a task like this, should they ever decide to undertake it. THIS. This is exactly how I feel. It's building a creative project through focus group testing, something I will always disagree with. It feels completely wrong. I'd much rather see what they think is cool and adds to the game and its world than what they think players want more of. The Au Ra coming around and being disappointing to me only puts the weakness of the game's character creation in sharp relief. Expect me to bitch again if the next expansion's race is similarly disappointing.

I still do not understand why people insist on justifying these things monetarily. Look, Square Enix's finances are not your or my problem. They can handle that side; it's their ball to roll. Justifying decisions "because capitalism" is only an after-the-fact explanation for how things are, not a justification for why we can't have nice things. We don't know how much things cost. Unless someone among us is one of the higher-ups in a video game development company that is making a game in a relevant genre, none of us can know how much any of these things cost. Therefore it is a pointless tack to take when discussing ideas for what we, as players, want that is not in the game currently. All we know is that all things take time and effort to produce. We can decide what to prioritize because we know not everything can be prioritized, but simply taking things out of consideration because you think they'd be too expensive when you don't have any facts on expenses is foolhardy to me. But since the point was brought up already: Phantasy Star Online 2. It's one of SEGA's most successful franchise operations in ages, and it's purely because of the character creation and the dress-up. Believe it or not, there is a huge potential revenue stream there and I do not believe SE is sufficiently tapping into that as of now. Not that that matters to me. I just want better character creation purely for selfish reasons. :surprise: I'm sorry. This is just... incomprehensible to me. Dark Souls is your benchmark for an "extremely detailed character creation method"? Look up Dragon's Dogma. That is an extremely detailed character creation method.

First of all, criticism is not against the rules and I don't see anywhere in this thread where it was stated that only positive posts are allowed. Secondly, I obviously disagree with SE's decision and question their reasoning as well. I don't see the point of using existing races to determine the direction of new ones to the point where the races can become almost interchangeable (and note that there is heavily sexist element to this as well - Elezen males are not that popular but the male Au Ra still hew closer to them than they do male Hyurs or Miqo'te who are far more popular). And yes, I know the Au Ra have their own facial options. Again, a point of contention here is that they could easily have added some of those face options to the existing races and they would easily have fit in. You are supporting a direction I do not enjoy. It's really that simple. Note that being my enemy does not mean I wish ill upon you. It simply means that you are an opposing force to my own whims, and as such I am not going to be on your side. Okay, this is getting out of hand. Everything is fine. There is disagreement on a number of points but disagreement is not a problem in and of itself. For that matter, if there is an actual problem I trust the mods to handle it themselves, and they do not need backseat moderators to do their job for them.

No. I can be upset because I already have a character who is short and flat, and I don't need to make another character who is short and flat but has scales and horns. This is besides the point that they could have enough variety in the sliders such that 'short and flat' is not a racial trait at all, but instead an individual trait... you know, like it is IRL.

All of them. In all seriousness, I think 'cliche' is a fairly loaded and often useless phrase, given that simply subverting cliches is not in and of itself a valuable thing that improves stories. Sometimes cliches are cliches for a reason. I still subscribe to the notion that execution is far more important than originality in any case (not that you can actually be original in storytelling - everything's been done before, after all).

Then why in the world would you make the assertion that a character creator appeals primarily to a minority RPer demographic when so many games include them that do not have anything resembling a large RPer player base (well, actually, as a point of fact we are a tiny minority in every game we play, making the assertion rather absurd on its face)? I just do not understand. Your point regarding my condescending tone is well-taken, but then, I'm not the one posting things like this: I can read, thank you very much, and when I disagree with a point and provide inadequate evidence you can do better in pointing that out than posting things like this that better belong on 4chan. Key word: "relative". Your opinion is noted. It's just, as I have been making very clear, my opinion is completely different. Character creation is absolutely #1 on my list of priorities, above and beyond literally everything else. EVERYTHING else. It's not like I'm in a small minority, either, as a hugely significant proportion of the PSO2 player base plays that game largely for the character creation and customization, and the actual game part is just a nice bonus (particularly as, to be honest, the game itself is not that great and becomes pretty repetitive pretty quickly). There's a reason it has one of the highest fan art counts on pixiv.net. Part of the reason for this difference in priorities is probably the fact that, as a genderqueer individual who plays exclusively androgynous characters, it is so difficult for me to find games where I can actually play the characters I want to play. For someone who's always being catered to and can make do with whatever options are being thrown their way because they're the default target audience, of course their priorities would be completely different from my own. That difference is to be expected, really. The problem is that I am in the minority group, an extreme minority group at that, and so I get to suffer again and again and again as I am marginalized and ignored and treated as though I don't exist. You don't have that problem. Good for you. Surely you can understand why I am so passionate about this subject now? So at this point, I have to confess: I consider all fans of the Au Ra to be my enemies. They are pushing the direction in places I don't want to be, so of course I am going to push back, as futile and fruitless as it may be. Elezen and Roegadyn being rare have absolutely no bearing on the myriad smaller tweaks possible with body sliders. Even if Miqo'te were still the most common race there would be far more variety than we have now. Pear-shaped, V-shaped, rectangle-shaped, all kinds of body shapes that aren't represented in the game as of now, in addition to, say, adding bulk and mass to a character's arms and shoulders to represent that they use those muscles a lot, and so on and so forth. People use these options. They're worth having.

And I will forgive you your assumptions, but would greatly encourage you to watch your wording and think about how you might be coming off to others, lest people start to think you are part of the problem that's been plaguing the RPC lately. Well, that's not terribly helpful. I suppose it's worth noting that ignorance itself is not necessarily a negative trait, but rather something that simply "is". However, when you make blind assertions that are so easily provably wrong, I have to wonder how much investment is even worth putting into this conversation. It doesn't help when you seem to possess so much self-righteous conviction, to the point of condescendingly putting excessive emphasis on a single phrase that doesn't even help your case. But Foxberry is right, and unfortunately my tone is also less than ideal when it comes to things I am passionate about, so for that, I do apologize. My point remains the same regardless - a huge part of the problem with the Au Ra in my mind can be traced directly to the weak character creation. I strongly suggest checking out the character creation of the games I mentioned for reference as to what good character creation actually looks like, and just how common it has become.

Aion? APB? EVE Online? Dragon's Dogma (lol, game isn't even multiplayer)? Soul Calibur IV & V? Saints Row The Third & IV? Phantasy Star Online 2? More recently, Black Desert Online? I can forgive you your ignorance, because it seems you just don't follow very many games, but I assure you that deep character creation is not something built specifically to appeal to RPers or is niche and does, in fact, have a sort of mass appeal that FFXIV's simplistic character creation lacks. Hell, PSO2 itself is the poster child for a game where dress-up is basically half the game, what with the scratch being updated something on the order of every 2 weeks with new outfits, accessories, emotes, voice options, makeup, and so on - all stuff just to allow players to customize their characters more. How many Japanese players do you think are roleplaying in that lobby-based action co-op RPG? (Ironically, said action RPG actually has more options supporting roleplaying than any other game I can think of off the top of my head...) At this point, Square Enix has little excuse. Their character creation is just bad, especially if you directly compare it to some of the newer competition and even some non-MMORPG games. They need to do a lot of work if they really want to snare all the players they possibly can.

This is factually incorrect. If this were true, games like Blade & Soul would never get the kind of creation tools they give the player base (because the grand majority of Korean players do not engage in any kind of roleplaying). The rest of your post all goes back to my point about the design of the female Au Ra simply cannibalizing players of existing races. It feels incredibly pointless. But what's done is done. Hopefully next time they won't be so bloody disappointing.

Then you have folks on the exact flipside like myself who like the faces and eyes but cannot stand the horns and scales. Where's our version, eh? EHHH? Sometimes I wish they didn't even have the silly little races and just had a more robust character creator where you could mix and match elements as you pleased. We already have confirmation that all the races could interbreed with one another anyway. If I want to have an Au Ra babyface with Miqo'te features and no scales, why the hell not? (note: I know the answer to 'why' is a combination of 'dev time' and 'because PS3'; this is a rhetorical question) I still believe that the male and female versions could have been the two separate subraces with a female and male version for each. The blatant (and I mean IN-YOUR-FACE) pandering is downright insulting. Just on principle they should have developed both versions out completely instead of doing this crazy sexual dimorphism shtick. Another race with the midlander vs highlander level of differentiation would have been glorious. Too bad, so sad, etc. I'm also going to reiterate for the hundred time that I don't necessarily want something that's vicious or ugly or frighteningly beast-like, just something that's not so damn obviously human. You can easily make non-human races that are also visually attractive and obtain a wide player base. The Au Ra themselves could have been this if they didn't back down and turn the scales into ridiculous cosplay ornaments instead of the full-body features they should have been (which also would have made them recolorable instead of completely static). Ugh, the missed opportunities...

Likewise. And really, when it comes right down to it, they already got that audience with the current races. The Au Ra are not covering any niche that was not already covered, with the possible (and only) exception of Au Ra males with their wild and crazy hairdos... a trait that, sadly, the females do not share. If anything, they're just going to end up cannibalizing a lot of the players of the existing races, but the actual player base will not increase sizably as a result of that versus the new classes or new gameplay options. But that's just my idle speculation and suspicion, and nothing more. The most annoying thing is that a lot of the options - especially the face options - are extraneous and could easily have been applied to any existing race. The baby face options in particular could have been thrown on Miqo'te and they would have fit in handily. It's really sad that it takes an entirely new race just to get some of those options in there.

T'rahnu will stab the first one that comes within arm's reach of her. It will be an involuntary action and she will apologize profusely afterwards but then proceed to warn them to keep their distance from her until she has confirmed they are not a threat to her well-being. She also gets this strange urge to saw off and collect an Au Ra horn but respects the autonomy of others far too much to do something so cruel.

Blade & Soul fixed all of that, however. They still have a huge number of sliders but limited them such that you can no longer make blatant monstrosities that defy the game's art style (though it helps in this case that the game has such strong art direction versus Aion where they just throw things in for the sake of it). I find body sliders are the single most important ingredient in creating unique-looking characters. That change in silhouette shape completely alters your impression of a character and dramatically increases the overall variety. The complete lack of anything like that in FFXIV is a crying shame IMO. The racial variety helps but it is not even remotely a replacement. I can't make T'rahnu unusually broad-shouldered or give a guy a steroid gut or make an unusually thin Lalafell or any of that stuff, and that just kills it for me. The only reason I'm okay with my character now is because they thankfully went with a more androgynous female body shape versus the overtly effeminate shapes used in other games. If they did end up going the Wildstar route I wouldn't even be playing this game right now. Hell, half the reason I'm putting up with a massive language barrier and huge latency disadvantage (in a game where 160ms latency cuts your attack speed in half) is just because Blade & Soul has such strong character creation that it really makes me attached to my character. If FFXIV could do something like that, it would be perfect, but... All of this just to say that the Au Ra are disappointing specifically because the character creatoin itself is so weak. With more options and more variety even I, with all my complaints, would be able to find something to like in them... but being pigeonholed into their extremely narrow vision ruins it all for me.

T'rahnu is a thoroughly rambunctious, happy-go-lucky individual... at least on the surface. She has hefty internal resentment boiling inside of her that would take a very special individual to unearth. She feels she has an insurmountable debt that needs to be repaid, and refuses to let herself off until it is (re: never). She tends to be overly touchy-feely and doesn't respect the personal space of others, happily wrapping her arms around complete strangers if she feels like it (which is especially true of big, burly men, whom she tends to treat like oversized teddy bears). She's incredibly, perhaps even absurdly warm to everyone around her, including her enemies. Insulting her will only get you compliments on your vocabulary in return. This can make her either completely hateful or your best friend, depending on how you interpret this. Even if someone presents a major threat to her, she will never stop being irreverent. (She will, however, get the heck out of dodge as soon as it becomes apparent that the situation is not in her favor.) She has pretty much no shame at all. If someone ever sees her naked body she makes no effort to cover herself up - just the opposite, in fact, as she is full of pride for her good genes and training. Traditional standards of feminine beauty have zero hold on her, and she does not make any effort to please those who do not appreciate her for what she is. She can be infuriatingly snarky at times, but this is not out of hostility, but rather simply an effort to poke fun at every situation no matter how inappropriate. She is not the type of person you want to invite to any formal events, though she can be bribed to at least keep quiet over the duration. For her, personal enjoyment is simply at the top of her priority queue, everything else be damned. Of course, sometimes this does mean that doing her usual shtick would just ruin her fun, so in these situations she does keep her hands to herself. T'rahnu does not have any particular goal in mind. She focuses mostly on improving her (already considerable) martial prowess and having fun. Oddly enough, doing just this has taken her pretty far in life, but much of it can, again, be attributed to her good genes and training and not any great personal effort on her part. Her idea of 'having fun' unfortunately includes messing with things she should not have any hand in, as well as indiscriminate promiscuity. She can handily be described as the type of person to live hard and die young - though when she does bite it, it likely won't be at the hands of another. Her strategy with regards to the few things she really cannot stand is pretty simple: stay away. Keep a safe distance. Fortunately, her list of such things is pretty small, and largely consists of things any reasonable individual would consider unsafe. She's not reckless - just daring. Despite all of this, she can actually be pretty helpful at times. She's surprisingly competent at many different tasks, and she works as great moral and emotional support. Somehow, her own inner turmoil prevents her from looking down on anyone else, even if she can't quite understand the situation they're in. People down in the dumps just isn't fun for anyone, after all, so why shouldn't she try to improve the situation, however she can?

Made another character, this one a recurring one for me. Looks pretty close to how I imagined her but she really needs to be a hyur and not a bloody scaled, horned up freak.

I tried to make the most aggressive, fiercest-looking female Raen I possibly could. She looks fine up close but ends up looking just bored and disinterested from a distance. My opinion on the race has not changed. In fact, I think the face options are nice but are completely wasted because of the extraneous scales, horns, and tail. The tail that starts off thin and then goes fat in particular looks really fucking dumb and I'm wondering who in the world signed off on that. Also no skin tone that is 100% matching the scales, so that's also a sad. Ho-hum. Really, I just can't get past the cosplay scales and the horns. The horns, man! Just imagine how much of a hindrance they'd be in everyday life. Ugh. One of those things that's cool on paper but becomes really grating the more you think about it. Edit: Just saw this on reddit: That is a RIDICULOUS babyface. Gatdamm.

Stop repeating yourself. No bad decision is justified by repeating "but someone always complains!" It's just an excuse, and a poor one at that. You can always work towards reducing the number of complaints.

This is such a pointless rebuttal. They CAN please everyone... by adding enough variety, either within the character creation itself or between the various races. If the game had Aion or Blade & Soul levels of sliders and feature tweaking you can bet your ass they'd be seeing FAR fewer complaints about this sort of thing. But they don't, so here we are. Of course, it doesn't help that they hyped up Yugiri's face by hiding it at first only to then reveal that SURPRISE she's just a human with some weird deformities on her skin and where her ears would be. Sigh. I, personally, am constantly disappointed by the weakness of the game's character creation, especially considering the time the game came out, when body sliders were finally starting to become en vogue and here all Squeenix can manage is a pithy little height slider and boob sliders. PS3 support was the absolute worst possible decision they could ever have made in my mind. Of course, I say that not knowing how much revenue comes from that obsolete hardware (probably a significant chunk especially in Japan), but I don't care, because it's not my problem, and it's just holding the game back in very significant ways. The trade-off is not worth it, in other words. But I'm just ranting now. Just... ugh. Need to get all of this disappointment out of my system. And then tomorrow morning I will be reminded of my disappointment yet again and the cycle will start anew.

The counterpoint to that is that you already have the most popular "niches" (which is really a misnomer since we're talking about the masses here, but hey) covered by the currently existing races, so presumably the whole point of a new race would be to cover entirely new ideas that are not already extant within the game. Hell, they don't even have to go wild and crazy with it. If the Au Ra had full-body scales I would have been all for it. One can only hope. They don't even need to be unappealingly monstrous, mind you. I just want something that is not obviously human. The Asura, for example, are a great example of a race that is both aesthetically pleasing and still very much obviously not human. I get why they didn't want to do anything 'risky'. The game only just recently recovered from the horror that was 1.0, after all, and the race's actual development probably occurred within the first year from launch. That being said... the whole thing with playing up Yugiri's need to hide her face was HILARIOUS in hindsight considering just how blasé their actual appearance is. It was a real kick in the teeth for me after all that build-up. I still want a race that matches the Iksar for sheer glory and awesomeness for me. I have yet to see anything - any race, in any MMORPG - match that. For me at least, especially the females, they really strike that lovely balance between viciousness and beauty in their aesthetics. There's so much more that could be done with a race like that, especially with regards to scale patterns and the like. Just the tease that the new race could be somewhere, ANYWHERE near that raised my hype up to the high heavens, only for it to be sent crashing catastrophically down upon the reveal. But I get it. I'm a minority. And marketing says fuck minorities, they don't exist, don't pretend to cater to them because they're not going to pay you enough to make it worth it and blah-blah-blah, I should get used to being tread upon and having all my dreams crushed and what is even the point anymore grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr Okay. I need to go sleep. But I can't even... I can't even begin to describe the depths of my disappointment right now. It's such a silly, insignificant thing to be angry about, but godsdammit being neglected like this really makes me feel just how bad it is for folks like me right now. No one ever caters to people like me. And, in all likelihood, no one ever will ever again. The Iksar were a fluke, a one-time deal, and with the state of EQNext a great big question mark after all the crap Daybreak has went through, I'm better off just keeping it all in my head. Forget hope. There is no hope. I fully expect the following race after Au Ra - assuming there is one - to be along the same lines of generic-barely-any-different-from-human-ness and I will forever be disappointed and forced to face the fact that I am simply one weirdo with a wish that will never be fulfilled. Never. Ever.

No one said they look like children because they're short. The comment that started off this thread of conversation merely compared the height to teenagers (not children) in their own country, and noted that because it was the MAXIMUM height, which they found striking. Words could definitely have been chosen better, but it was not to imply that they look like children. On the other hand, Ember has a point - the extremely high levels of neoteny found in the females of the Au Ra DO make them look more childlike, and it is that in combination with the height that makes them look extremely young. I personally find this to be irritating because we already have a race that fills that particular niche (Miqo'te) and I still don't really see what niche the Au Ra fill that was not already filled. Well, the guys at least are more distinct... which only makes the failure of the females to be more interesting all the more conspicuous. Unless I find something amazing through the character creation, it seems I will not stop being critical of the Au Ra and Squeenix's designs any time soon.

Omg... I would have taken this. Ugh, what wouldn't I do to get an actually beastly race in the game...

We've discussed this before. Genital size is NOT proportional to body size. Remember the gorilla 2-inch penis... I'm not even talking about genital size. D: Just the body mass, man. That gorilla thing makes me chuckle every time... I still don't see how this would be an issue. He should not be laying on top of her or otherwise bearing his weight down on her regardless. How do you think two humans of large weight discrepancies get it on IRL?

We've discussed this before. Genital size is NOT proportional to body size. Remember the gorilla 2-inch penis...

While they're at it, having the head size scale properly with height instead of height scaling absolutely everything in that really lazy scale-all-vertices-by-x-width-y-girth-and-z-height fashion would be really nice. Because, right now, a character that's 4'8" does NOT look 4'8" simply because they're exactly the same number of heads tall as the 5'4" character right beside them. Which is disturbing, really, because that's just not how things work IRL. IRL head size among adults is generally constant, with a few exceptions. Shorter people do not have smaller heads than taller people, but that's what you get with this kind of lazy height scaling. But anyways... too late for any change in that area now. Maybe one day, when they drop PS3 support entirely, they'll do a major expansion of the character creation... one can dream, eh?