Wymsical

Because it's essentially making two different races. Wholly new meshes, faces, features, the way armor and clothing fits on them, ect. It's a lot of work and they did it once; sadly, there's very few people playing the second half of that race. Given how much else they were doing with HW, I understand why they probably considered it but were unable to justify that amount of work for what might've very well been another 40% of a 6%.

I definitely play sometimes-pale, petite females with a penchant for magic and eerie. They've all had very different styles, executions and personalities but I still feel a little guilty that my designs all have such a common thread in a distinct fashion that my friends all immediately know what general aesthetic I'll do. Oh well, guilty pleasure!

That's my real qualm with some of the complaints; an implication that the race is objectively disappointing and adds nothing new. Finding out about Au Ra really put a spring in my step for coming back to the game. None of the other races had quite the look I wanted and I wasn't looking forward to finding something I could settle for. I love the Au Ra female design and my one real disappointment with them is horns being tied to faces. Otherwise, I'm quite happy. Now of course I'd love for other people to also get a character whose look they absolutely adore too! I'm just very happy with this race and sometimes I'm just a little disappointed when a lot of negativity appears in every Au Ra thread. I really wish it wasn't being painted like being happy with Au Ra is a bad thing in some ways. Edit: Also, I genuinely believe the only real similarity between Au Ra and Miqo'te is a similar body type and face style, and their actual facial options have a very different tone to them.

I guess that depends on what you consider quality. I think a significant portion of the changes can be attributed to the age of gamers changing and the people targeted slowly widening. For example, a common complaint that I see is how much more difficult all games used to be and how a more 'accelerated' experience is common now. To be fair, 'easy' is simpler to make but I also think the aging gaming population is partially to blame as well; some of us simply don't have as much time anymore and we're buying games that let us take things at our own pace with more progress/success rather than agonizing over that nearly-impossible last level for hours.

I'm honestly a little dubious that a robust reading system consisting of six cards will be provided, especially since the astrologian's exact skills fall more under 'attuning oneself to the stars to change fate (via healing/buffs/damage)'. Of course, we won't know until we do the job quests! That being said, I like the vast array in Tarot but I don't intend to actually call it that ICly. The card names fit easily into the setting as well! I understand the concern and I'll be working to meld them convincingly into the world. Given the significant European influences in Eorzea, I think it'd fit in excellently, along with any other fortune telling styles people care to use. That said, I'm very curious to see if the job quests address the cards' in any detail.

I still haven't come to terms with Silent Hills cancellation. PT was incredible and the biggest hope I had for that franchise in years. 2, 3 and 4 have been such inspirations to me and it's hard to believe how hard they've run Silent Hill into the ground. I still haven't forgiven them for the ending of Shattered Memories. At this point, I'm finally starting to accept that franchise is dead even though there's so much more that could be done with it. What a shame.

Whether you keep it simple or complex is really a matter of your (and the character's) personal style. I'm using Tarot in the context of reading for personal introspection, reflection and examination instead of simpler, easy answers. In my format, the reader helps explain the possible interpretations of whichever of the 78 cards have been drawn. That's a very particular technique. A simpler one would really benefit from using just the in-game ones. Not that I'm going to ignore them; I intend to incorporate their use into the IC portion of the reading.

I would like variety too! Most aren't trying to justify, they're just attempting to explain possible reasons for why design choices were made. 6-7% of players are Roegadyn. 10% are Highlanders. Of those players, approximately less than 40% are females. In the context of wanting to devote your extremely busy team to something that will be majority-popular, 'safe' types make the most business and manpower sense. It sucks for the players who want tough ladies, but producing for majority appeal can be cold that way. Personally, I'm hoping the demand for Viera convinces SE to try their hand at something different - even if it isn't Viera exactly.

You're correct that the in-game Astrologian deck is much smaller than a Tarot one (6 or 8 cards, that I recall). That is likely for a gameplay reason since many more would jus hamper smooth skill use. I have been making the assumption that the cards Astrologians use are very particularly chosen and aesthetically tuned ones for the purposes of battle and healing, and that other card decks for more 'mundane' purposes could very well exist. Not explicitly stated in lore, but I wouldn't say it's a far stretch. Cards and fortune telling have spanned time and cultures! Using such a small deck would be very limiting for fortune telling.

I disagree that the Au Ra don't fill a new niche. People like horns, tails and scales, especially with ethereal, eerie customization. The race happens to be on popular face and body types that don't fill every taste, unfortunately for some. But if I had to pick my Au Ra's face either on a catgirl or a dragon-demon girl, I'd go with the latter every time. I actually was really excited that I could be a horned female without being super tall and huge-boobed because it was more to my tastes. There's plenty of people switching because they prefer the aesthetic.

My Au Ra will handle things completely differently but variety is fantastic! I'd actually love to do events revolving around fortune telling, maybe even listing the different readers and their style/speciality in some IC fashion! It'd be great to arrange sometime after HW launch! I'd love to discuss it. c:

I'm going to main an Au Ra and it's a lot of fun reading all these reactions. Suspicious/hateful/disapproving reactions are particularly interesting to RP with and I can't wait to see all of this once people start RPing in HW! Tension in RP is always fun.

Actually, this is what I'll be doing with my astrologian. I've purchased a particular Tarot deck and will be doing an actual reading in tandem with the roleplay instead of using randomized cards or numbers online. I considered using an Oracle deck but I'm not as familiar with that format. Plus, the concepts on the standard 78-card Tarot deck are easily translated to XIV, at least ones with more traditional illustrations and meanings. I'll also be using different spreads depending on what the person she's reading wishes to know. I hope people will like that extra bit of 'authenticity'; I really enjoy reading Tarot and this was the perfect way to incorporate it!

This is the crux of it, right here. SE's character creation is pretty poor. You don't even have to dislike it to acknowledge the fact that it's extremely limited in scope. Though even then, they should have at least gone the midlander/highlander route. Let the civilized and open Raen be the petite, cute ones (the males, too!), while the nomadic warrior Xaela can have a much more aggressive silhouette and options. Makes lore sense and lets both "sides" get what they want. At a guess, they might've considered doing that but decided that it wasn't worth the time and effort that could be put into other Heavensward stuff (especially with the Highlanders being significantly less popular than the Midlanders). Obviously some people in the thread disagree with that! I also strongly believe most of the issues with character creation stem from the 'Character Data Limits' that surely are the fault of continued PS3 support. I hope this won't be as much of an issue once PS3 support is dropped.

More leeway with the height scaler in general would be great. With most races it's only five to six inches. Interestingly, roegadyn females are the only ones who get a whole foot to work with.

Adding more most likely won't happen - because it probably can't. Time and time again, when we ask for new options for old races they say that 'Character Data Limits' prevent it. I believe the last time this was brought up, it was when people were asking for new Highlander male beards and they quoted this as the reason why they couldn't. I'm not certain but it sounds like PS3 support limitations. It'd be neat if they tweaked the textures so the scales blend more with the skin or changed one of the faces to look older, though.

At this point in the thread, I'm just going to say that I personally am happy with the Au Ra females so far, barring me somehow not making anything I like in the benchmark. But there are some that definitely don't and I think we can all agree the scales and horns have some odd choices. Would it have been great if they had clans with actual physical differences instead of just coloring? Absolutely. Ultimately, I think the people who do like Au Ra are getting weary of all the negativity in most of the threads about them but the people who are dissatisfied with the design are expressing their disappointment and feedback. And, after all, Square Enix should be aware of all the varying tastes in the game so they can take these opinions under consideration too. Me, it's a little disheartening to be excited about Au Ra and run across very harsh judgments of the race and sometimes implications about the reasons for their design. But I also want super neat more mature looking ladies for the others too! So, uh... I guess I don't have any good advice besides maybe some threads about ideas for new races and feedback about old concept art on the official and these forums to bring awareness to SE would be awesome?

A beastly race would be neat, but there's two issues with that. Across most - if not all - MMOs, beast races actually are played only by a smaller portion of the population. I could see a beastly race added if it was similar to the Hyur structure with one clan being more beastly and the other more humanoid. But that's actually a fairly minor issue and here's the stumbling block for beast races in XIV: we're currently all playing 'races of Man' with a common ancestor. Beast races are still seen significantly differently, with varying degrees of intelligence, aggression, population and sentience. None of them are seen as 'equal or close to equal' with the races we play. And therein is the big issue, putting a beast race at the level of peer. But I think XIV could do it, with some really neat, strange race that is much more beastly and monstrous. It'd require a significant amount of storyline development and world shifting to possibly allow for it and it'd be a much more demanding modeling and meshing endeavor (to say nothing of making armor fit)... which leads back to my first point that beast races, in general, are much less popular in MMOs. But I definitely could see it happening down the road when SE is feeling much more assured in the game's stability and success and the fans continue to clamor for it. Right now, they're focusing on the 'big picture' of populations and taking too many risks probably makes them very nervous. A hugely successful expansion or two could really alleviate some of these concerns.

The site added a few new screens that included height sliders. People made some calculations from the centimeters shown. Though I'm not certain if they'll actually be shorter than Miqo'te in-game since that's only a scant inch or two of difference.

They're pretty neat, yup. I have to assume that these designs were rejected for being too complex/complicated or something like that. I definitely like the horn designs better for some of these. (i.e., the PS3 ruins everything)

Yup, basically this. As Spiritual pointed out, people of large size and/or weight discrepancies manage to get it on and make babies all the time. It's like people think sex involves a mighty bellyflop onto the other person. ... well, it might, I'm not judging.

I'd definitely be interested! I need to start collecting LS again.

Because inquiring minds want to know! And have brought attention to related issues repeatedly? Though I'm more curious about the physiology of the 'cranial projections'.

Technically, those are 'cranial projections' and not exactly horns as we think of them. So says the lore on them, anyhow.

If I'm not mistaken, it's more that humans have a greater chance of variance in size instead of it being directly correlated to body mass?