Thoughts on the Au Ra?

[Naunet]

The "lazy" accusation towards SE comes from the way they put no effort into maintaining a consistent aesthetic across the race. Rather than create an equally delicate and beautiful male model, or an equally fierce, lithe, and draconic female model, they went with plan B for the guys and "pretty human with some horns" for the ladies. I find it "lazy" in thought process. They couldn't fathom a beauty beyond the simple standard present in 90% of their women already.

 

Do I think they're pretty? Yeah. Doesn't mean they're not disappointing, and I won't hesitate to call out SE for falling into the thoughtless character design trap.

[shotgunbadger]

Yea I like them, I'll probably be making one, but it's fair to say 'wow a race of super buff dudes and skinny 'sly' women that look like humans with horns and a scale texture applied, really went deep there duders'. You can do a good job with a lazy idea.

[Clover]

Well, no other race in FFXIV has very different males and females, so this one is different than the rest for that reason.

 

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

 

I know that many Western games go wild when creating different races, but those are created under a 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't dare to touch them with a stick.

 

So, 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.

[Tiergan]

On a completely different note:

 

Not sure if it was brought up, but I kinda wonder how Isghardians will feel about Au Ra. (DID THEIR PREDECESSORS LAY WITH DRAGONS?! )

[Zyrusticae]

Ugh, actually seeing them side-by-side actually makes it look... pretty gross.

 

Of course my mind is firmly in the gutter here, but seriously? Think about this for a second. Those guys. Breeding with those girls. It makes. NO. SENSE.

 

Ugh. Not a fan. Not at all a fan of that. And the scale patches look completely out of place on such smooth skin...

[Kage]

I've seen some people question if perhaps their ancestors were like SHiva and they were exiled/fled/made an exodus to escape persecution.

[Eve Malusion]

My thing is - concept artists are always thinking about silhouette.  It's important because you want people to be able to look at a character at a glance and instantly know what they are.   A lot of times, some concept artists will even start concepting creatures by drawing out a silhouette first and then designing on top of it.

 

If we made silhouettes of all the different races, most of them would be pretty easily distinguishable ...except maybe miqo'te and midlanders if we cropped off the cat ears and tails.  They tried to make up for it by giving them noticeably larger, cat-like eyes, a slightly different facial structure from midders - (or a very different facial structure if you have the older male miqo'te nunh face).  If you put a hyur midder and a miqo'te side by side, you can visibly see the differences in their faces.

 

What we've seen of female Au Ra doesn't really do that. The silhouette just reads "female midlander with horns and tail".  Their faces just have a few scales tacked on, but overall look like midlanders or like they're trying to squeeze the features in somewhere between midlander and miqo'te.

 

At the end of the day, I'm not really going to lose any sleep over it - but it's very hard to argue that the same level of work in making the male Au Ra unique went into the females too.

I honestly get this even more from the males than the females. If not for the horns, I'd have an extremely hard time telling them from Elezen at a glance. Heck, from the closeup we got in the video I genuinely had to take a double take to make sure it wasn't just the same face with the horns strapped on.

 

That said, I really like the race. I personally put a lot of weight on run and walk cycles, and from the video we saw they have what I consider the best and most natural looking run cycles in the game, especially for the males. The females seemed a tiny bit off, but I have a hard time putting my finger on why. I think their center of mass might be off if accounting for the tail.

 

Also while I don't really want to get too involved in the whole lazy or not discussion, from my admittedly limited understanding of the development cycle, adding a scaley skin mesh is not a very large job in comparison to what they did at all. The majority of the work would be in designing destinct animations, stances and basically anything motion related, or the parts where gear needs to be modified (the horns). On the basis of that alone I consider it a pure aesthetic decision, rather than one that has anything to do with laziness. It would have taken a relatively close amount of work to make them all scaley compared to how they are now. If they came out and the females had the same animation sets as the midlanders, then I'd agree, but from what I can tell from what we've seen of motion, they're distinctly different.

 

To me the word "Lazy" would mean they took a route that required a significantly lower amount of work than the alternative, which they didn't. Making a more fierce female is not a significantly more taxing process than what they made, when what they made has a new model, skeleton, and animation set. Yes the aesthetic they went for was one that was meant to appeal more to the majority and less to a niche, thats a business decision, not a sloth one.

[K'nahli]

The "lazy" accusation towards SE comes from the way they put no effort into maintaining a consistent aesthetic across the race. Rather than create an equally delicate and beautiful male model, or an equally fierce, lithe, and draconic female model, they went with plan B for the guys and "pretty human with some horns" for the ladies. I find it "lazy" in thought process. They couldn't fathom a beauty beyond the simple standard present in 90% of their women already.

 

Do I think they're pretty? Yeah. Doesn't mean they're not disappointing, and I won't hesitate to call out SE for falling into the thoughtless character design trap.

 

That's where your argument holds no objective merit in my eyes. You are insisting that races should always command some consistent aesthetic across the genders to conform to your standards or interests, and that is your opinion and your preference. The fact that females are not very similar to the males in height and their lack of largely-pronounced features does not make the developers lazy.

 

No-one whom likes the race cares enough to be offended that you or anyone else does not feel similarly, nor does the case apply in vice versa; what Ashren was talking about(and correct me if I am wrong, Ashren), is that you are very, unfairly throwing negative comments towards the developers because their chosen design didn't appeal to your standards or expectations. You and many other people were hoping for something that in the end, did not deliver. You have every right to be disappointed and even to be disgruntled by the similarities between Au Ra females and existing female races, but your(plural) dissatisfaction with that does not translate into laziness on anyone's part.

 

"Laziness" carries a very, obviously negative connotation since it implies that they deliberately didn't put enough time, creativity or effort into the female race. You can never know enough to decide that is the case and make such an accusation. As far as you know, and I am very sure is the case, Square Enix designed a race that would and has successfully appealed to people, just not everyone; and that can never be avoided.

[Norna]

Okay, I only got a good look at the bodies before and now I'm seeing that compared to the males, the females have some serious baby-face going on on top of their smaller bodies(even peacocks and peahens have the same facial structures despite superficial feather differences. And if we're talking lizards with big size differences, this anole is pretty extreme and still basically have the same faces across genders).

 

*Starts praying to the Twelve* Please let there be older face options! Also, let the girls have some fierce eye options like the guys!

[Arelian Solin]

Ugh, actually seeing them side-by-side actually makes it look... pretty gross.

 

Of course my mind is firmly in the gutter here, but seriously? Think about this for a second. Those guys. Breeding with those girls. It makes. NO. SENSE.

 

Ugh. Not a fan. Not at all a fan of that. And the scale patches look completely out of place on such smooth skin...

How indeed...

 

[Zyrusticae]

That's where your argument holds no objective merit in my eyes. You are insisting that races should always command some consistent aesthetic across the genders to conform to your standards or interests, and that is your opinion and your preference. The fact that females are not very similar to the males in height and their lack of largely-pronounced features does not make the developers lazy.

 

No-one whom likes the race cares enough to be offended that you or anyone else does not feel similarly, nor does the case apply in vice versa; what Ashren was talking about(and correct me if I am wrong, Ashren), is that you are very, unfairly throwing negative comments towards the developers because their chosen design didn't appeal to your standards or expectations. You and many other people were hoping for something that in the end, did not deliver. You have every right to be disappointed and even to be disgruntled by the similarities between Au Ra females and existing female races, but your(plural) dissatisfaction with that does not translate into laziness on anyone's part.

 

"Laziness" carries a very, obviously negative connotation since it implies that they deliberately didn't put enough time, creativity or effort into the female race. You can never know enough to decide that is the case and make such an accusation. As far as you know, and I am very sure is the case, Square Enix designed a race that would and has successfully appealed to people, just not everyone; and that can never be avoided.

For the record, I see every race that is clearly and obviously based off of a largely unchanged human base to be 'lazy', which means, yes, ALL of FFXIV's (playable) races are 'lazily designed' in my mind. That also goes for most of Star Trek's aliens, the Asari of Mass Effect, a fair number of aliens in Star Wars, etc., etc. If you decide not to stray far from the human template I am going to say you did not put enough effort into it.

 

Yes, this is subjective; that is obvious. It doesn't need to be pointed out. It's a semantic diversion that has no bearing on the fundamental argument. Everyone has different standards, and honestly, I would argue that any notion of objectivity is a false one when it comes to matters like these. This isn't rocket science; there's no hard math or numbers involved. It's all opinions.

 

In truth, I wish we could play as any one of the beast tribe races. I know that will never happen for obvious resource and popularity reasons, but that is how I feel. I'd love for Mamool Ja to be a playable race and would take that option in a heartbeat if presented with it. (The closest I can get to this in any game is Iksar in Everquest, with Argonians from The Elder Scrolls an obvious close second.) That being said, they could easily make a race that straddles the middle ground between 'beast race' and 'obviously human', but for some reason they do not, and that saddens me.

 

They took the easy way out, plain and simple. I will call it 'lazy' because that's how it looks in my eyes and you are entirely within your right to disagree with that assertion, but there's no point trying to argue that it should not or cannot apply in this instance. I'm not pretending to be 'objective'. I'm just telling you how I feel.

[cuideag]

I am very eagerly looking forward to seeing more of the lady Au Ra's customization options. Would definitely love something a little more fierce, yeah, and some thing more distinct than "negligible patch of scales between the eyes" or whatever that is. We've only seen a little bit - hopefully there's more to deliver. Fingers crossed!

 

Either way I don't see myself rolling one.

[Yoshi]

<.< I wonder if anyone will be disgusted with me (judging from the back-and-forth comments so far), but I'm literally creating a place-holder toon as we speak. Quite excited!

One of my favourite characters of all time is Kunoichi... and kunoichis in general are just bedazz'd. So, uh, point being: I want a ninja bodyguard chicka ;u;. And I want her now. I was contemplating how to go about it since returning from hiatus (but decided to create Fae instead, 'cause I wasn't sure how things were in the "East" where they supposedly originated from, as well as some other finer points). However... yeah! Happy! *Dances*

[Kinono]

I'll play around with them in character creator, but unless I make something that I feel really attached to or the lore surrounding them just blows me away, it'll stay confined to character creator.

 

I got my hopes up for something a bit more... something. Different? Beastly. They're nice as they are, and I'm certain they'll appeal to a lot of people, but between the obviously (possibly pandering) dimorphism and the stated facts of basically being elezen and miqo'te with different ears, horns, and scales, I can't get excited about them. I just had my heart set on something different.

[K'nahli]

They took the easy way out, plain and simple. I will call it 'lazy' because that's how it looks in my eyes and you are entirely within your right to disagree with that assertion, but there's no point trying to argue that it should not or cannot apply in this instance. I'm not pretending to be 'objective'. I'm just telling you how I feel.

 

You can feel however you please as that is not something anyone should allow themselves to get worked up over, but don't expect not to be found unfair for blaming the devs for doing something "wrong"(calling them lazy implies it) and not be called upon by people who find your unfair comments.... well, unfair. After all, it is an arbitrary and direct criticism of the devs taken from 0 known facts about why the chose the design they did... and an indirect criticism towards those who really like how the class turned out.

 

Call it petty if you wish but there is a significant difference between "feeling" something was lazily designed and "declaring" it to be the case. I'd argue that even "feeling" such would be a prejudicially, misplaced concept but this, to me, is really feeling increasingly redundant as something to debate over because, as you said, it's largely irrelevant to the topic at hand.

 

(Again Ashren, I apologise if I am misrepresenting your opinion from earlier).

 

 

 

Edit:

 

I got my hopes up for something a bit more... something. Different? Beastly. They're nice as they are, and I'm certain they'll appeal to a lot of people, but between the obviously (possibly pandering) dimorphism and the stated facts of basically being elezen and miqo'te with different ears, horns, and scales, I can't get excited about them. I just had my heart set on something different.

 

To use the person's post as an example, she basically shared the sentiment as those who called the design lazy, without essentially calling the choice "bad" or "improper". The word "lazy" just strikes a bad chord with people because it sounds less like a personal opinion and more like some sort of suggested, negative fact.

[Tiergan]

Entirely personal thoughts unrelated to the whole lazy vs not-lazy thing:

 

We already have our tougher ladies with the Fem-Roes and the lady Highlanders. Midlander females and ESPECIALLY female miqo'te have the 'cutesy moe girl" market cornered.

 

Instead of having a similar facial aesthetic to miqo'te and midlanders, I was hoping the at least one of the female Au Ra options would look elegant, but still lethal. There's one picture floating around Tumblr that I am liking the feeling of if the models continue to veer in that direction. It has much more noticeable scales/horns, including much more noticeable ones on her face. Her facial features and facial structure feels more like adult proportions than child-ones.

 

From what I can see, there are two clans just like there are with all the other races. 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. It'll kind of suck if it's just a color swap.

[Havoc Snow]

They took the easy way out, plain and simple. I will call it 'lazy' because that's how it looks in my eyes and you are entirely within your right to disagree with that assertion, but there's no point trying to argue that it should not or cannot apply in this instance. I'm not pretending to be 'objective'. I'm just telling you how I feel.

 

You can feel however you please as that is not something anyone should allow themselves to get worked up over, but don't expect not to be found unfair for blaming the devs for doing something "wrong"(calling them lazy implies it) and not be called upon by people who find your unfair comments.... well, unfair. After all, it is an arbitrary and direct criticism of the devs taken from 0 known facts about why the chose the design they did... and an indirect criticism towards those who really like how the class turned out.

 

Call it petty if you wish but there is a significant difference between "feeling" something was lazily designed and "declaring" it to be the case. I'd argue that even "feeling" such would be a prejudicially, misplaced concept but this, to me, is really feeling increasingly redundant as something to debate over because, as you said, it's largely irrelevant to the topic at hand.

 

(Again Ashren, I apologise if I am misrepresenting your opinion from earlier).

Nope, what you've said so far in this post and the last pretty much sums up the point that I was trying to make. Just because you disagree with a design choice does not make it lazy, lazy implies little work, thought, or effort went into the design, and for those of us who actually enjoy the design calling it lazy instead of just saying you don't like it or you feel it is lazy (as you said there being a difference between feeling and declaring) feels somewhat condescending.

 

I suppose the best term here is "phrasing," it is like going to an art gallery. Person A thinks the art looks amazing and says so. Person B thinks the art is shit and declares that it is shit. Rather than the person who enjoys it feeling there is merely a difference in opinion, they feel like their own opinion is being attacked.

[shotgunbadger]

Yea I think that's what bugs me most. They said they wanted women of the race to be 'cool' and 'sly' or the like didn't they? Why would they basically carbon copy the the humans when they could actually make it very...reptilian. The dragon stuff plays into that, make them cold and harsh looking, make them look like they'll cut a chump who ticks them off without a second thought. That's how lizards do.

 

I really am hoping they just didn't have the more 'reptile' stuff ready, which I could understand, I want to make a lady who would make Isghardians go 'the fuck am I looking at here, should I be stabbing that?!'

[Naunet]

And the scale patches look completely out of place on such smooth skin...

 

It looks like they had a craft day and glued some foam cut-outs to themselves for a cosplay.

[Lost River]

I'm excited for the Au Ra; but as with the general consensus here; the males do look amazing and the women look like a last minute addition, honestly. You can see between the two in comparison; more time went into the male avatars than the female. Perhaps they'll be more refined when near completion?

[Flickering Ember]

Well, no other race in FFXIV has very different males and females, so this one is different than the rest for that reason.

 

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

 

I know that many Western games go wild when creating different races, but those are created under a 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't dare to touch them with a stick.

 

So, 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]

From what I can see, there are two clans just like there are with all the other races.  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.  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.

 

 

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]

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. :lol: Luckily, it hasn't gotten too bad...

 

 

 

...yet.

[Chlodomer]

 

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]

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?