The Women FFXIV Needs

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

Please re-read the OP to gain further insight as to the current issues in the visual designs of the main cast. My post focuses more on hairstyles and color palettes more than any other aspect of their design.

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I have already read it. And for me, the problem is really not only the "colour" of the main cast. It's a concern that actually seems quite secondary to me, in the sense that it can be justified by the lore (and by the cultural tendency, in Japan, to distinguish a main character by his or her hair colour).

If you want to introduce diversity, you might as well go all the way and kill two birds with one stone: change the colour AND go beyond the "wax figure" aspect.

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Originally Posted by Merrigan

I have already read it. And for me, the problem is really not only the "colour" of the main cast. It's a concern that actually seems quite secondary to me, in the sense that it can be justified by the lore (and by the cultural tendency, in Japan, to distinguish a main character by his or her hair colour).

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Ok so why are all the women in this game blond and nearly all with short or tied up hair? Fire Emblem 3 Houses is also a japanese game and they do not suffer from these sort of issues with visual design in terms of its women. There is sufficient variety in their cast. Naturally, as I have said before, the majority of players want to play attractive or idealized body types rather than some of the alternative options that have been suggested in this thread. Changing things up on the hair and color side of things would be an excellent starting point, along with a pivot back towards more fantastical and feminine clothes for them.

https://64.media.tumblr.com/d522ac2b...tp9o1_1280.jpg

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

Ok so why are all the women in this game blond and nearly all with short or tied up hair? Fire Emblem 3 Houses is also a japanese game and they do not suffer from these sort of issues with visual design in terms of its women. There is sufficient variety in their cast. Naturally, as I have said before, the majority of players want to play attractive or idealized body types rather than some of the alternative options that have been suggested in this thread. Changing things up on the hair and color side of things would be an excellent starting point, along with a pivot back towards more fantastical and feminine clothes for them.

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Most of Fire Emblem’s hair colors are still on the lighter side, especially if you remove the blues and purples that don’t exist in real life because Fire Emblem trends more on the anime side than Final Fantasy when it comes to hair colors.

There’s a variety in the cast because there’s always like 50 characters in each game. That doesn’t mean they’re really explored as much beyond a small handful though.

Yoshi-P has already commented on the whole white hair thing as a thing he noticed before and it just happened to be how things ended up. He even considered changing the hair color of some of the Scions for that reason. Urianger and Estinien were never originally meant to be involved with the Scions when they were first written.

But again, most JRPGs tend toward lighter hair colors. This isn’t new.

Numerous characters have sported unique hair colors throughout the series. Vanille, Rydia, Lenna, Faris, Terra, Lightning, Serah, Eiko, Maria, Porom, and so on. Given that there are a large amount of characters in the Fire Emblem cast that still are able to retain unique visual characteristics, it is concerning that FFXIV was not able to accomplish this despite having an easier, smaller amount of characters to work with. More care and attention should have been paid to the visual design and changing the hair colors of the scions would have been an adequate solution, especially with the visual changes they underwent at the start of Shadowbringers.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

Numerous characters have sported unique hair colors throughout the series. Vanille, Rydia, Lenna, Faris, Terra, Lightning, Serah, Eiko, Maria, Porom, and so on. Given that there are a large amount of characters in the Fire Emblem cast that still are able to retain unique visual characteristics, it is concerning that FFXIV was not able to accomplish this despite having an easier, smaller amount of characters to work with. More care and attention should have been paid to the visual design and changing the hair colors of the scions would have been an adequate solution, especially with the visual changes they underwent at the start of Shadowbringers.

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Not every Final Fantasy has anime hair colors and that slowly died off in a lot of other video games too when it became less important to differentiate sprites from each other. Amano's art for Terra even changed because of sprites being too similar and Lenna had something similar, being white-haired in art and CG and pink in sprites. Terra is blonde in Amano's art, CG, and in Dissidia. But because she looked too close to Celes due to the technology, she was given green hair.

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Shibuya and Amano originally designed Terra as having blonde hair, a staple of the Final Fantasy series due to the color's exotic connotations in Japanese culture, however Shibuya instead chose to change her hair to a bright green when finalizing the game's sprites in order to better distinguish Terra from the rest of the cast.

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The whole Ivalice series is grounded in realistic hair colors with the vast majority of characters being blonde. FFXV is completely realistic too, minus the notable exception of Ardyn. And that has also carried over into FFXVI from what we can tell of the characters we have seen so far.

FFXIV 1.0's character and art direction was done by Akihiko Yoshida, who also did art and character design for the Ivalice series and NieR: Automata so it's no surprise there's a lot of blonde and light-haired characters and more realistic designs. 1.0 was rooted more into realism and we had more medieval-inspired clothing, which is reflected in the clothing options for levels 1-50 that carried over into ARR. The different races had much more different hair color palettes from each other and the Plainsfolk Lalafell were the only ones afforded blue or green because of their lore. They could have made more of a change, but one of the constraints they had was to be able to bring everyone's 1.0 character mostly untouched into ARR.

While we can certainly afford to have more dark-haired NPCs, light hair is definitely the direction they went with from the beginning as is typical for the character designer. Since all but 2 of the Scions are carry-overs from 1.0, and they gave the newcomers "mystical white hair", it's carried on into the rest of the game since we don't have a cast that revolves as much as say FFXI. But I don't think long or dark hair is the most important thing we need for female characters in this game. You can already make your WoL's hair long or dark and there are plenty of other players with long or dark hair. MMOs I have played don't tend to allow for longer hairstyles for obvious reasons and that's mostly fine. Realistically, anyone who has long hair knows how much of a pain it is when you're moving around a lot anyway.

And as I said, Yoshi-P noticed how the characters coming together all happened to be blonde or have silver hair, but they did not decide to change their character designs since "that would create an entirely different impression". Take that as you will but I don't think they were required to change their characters' hair colors just because they noticed the characters they happened to bring together were similar. I've played pretty much every game Akihiko Yoshida designed so it never takes me out of the game when I don't see a lot of brunettes, it's just a style choice.

If you're going to bring up the topic of variations of female character design in the game, there's much more other things they can do and I don't think that "long and dark hair" is nearly on the same level as your other thread on more western-appealing guys.

Cool, they still had differently colored hair at the end of the day when I played those games. Perhaps a revolving cast is something they should consider in order to resolve further issues regarding the characterization of main party members. At this point what we precisely need is an entirely different impression or new characters because 10 more years of the scions isn't going to work out at this rate.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

Cool, they still had differently colored hair at the end of the day when I played those games. Perhaps a revolving cast is something they should consider in order to resolve further issues regarding the characterization of main party members. At this point what we precisely need is an entirely different impression or new characters because 10 more years of the scions isn't going to work out at this rate.

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10 more Years of the Scions will be just fine.
What could/should happen is characters get shuffled to support roles like Krile has numerous times and then make reappearance and rejoin the group when necessary.
And possibly their roles could be filled with new/different characters and Vice Versa.
You can hate on White Hair but these characters are well liked, so keeping them around is a better idea then completely shelving then completely replacing them with new brightly-colored haired characters

Adding another scholar to the cast in the form of Krile is the last thing the main party needs, given how oversaturated it is with those types. Forever characters are not a good thing, especially not 20 years worth of them for goodness sake. We cannot continue with a cast that looks and thinks the same like this one does. This will not make for a story that captures hearts the same way that Heavensward did.

The bar of quality has to be set and maintained, right now they can do better than what we're seeing.

Soon as I saw fang I said yup you got my vote

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

Adding another scholar to the cast in the form of Krile is the last thing the main party needs, given how oversaturated it is with those types. Forever characters are not a good thing, especially not 20 years worth of them for goodness sake. We cannot continue with a cast that looks and thinks the same like this one does. This will not make for a story that captures hearts the same way that Heavensward did.

The bar of quality has to be set and maintained, right now they can do better than what we're seeing.

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Who said anything about Scholars? Estinian wasn't a scholar and neither was Yda...erm...Lyse.
Forever characters arnt a bad thing, especially if the characters are well liked. Ill agree with anyone that the fake Deaths are kind of dumb especially if they do it more then once, but I dont find it necessary or a smart move to just get rid of familiar popular characters.
And...Shadowbringers did a pretty good job.

The twins already have a difficult reputation, G'raha Tia's presents an active turn-off to a decent chunk of players and shows no sign of stopping his problematic behavior, Estinien's grit was watered down, Thancred is widely regarded as having no further use in the party, and Y'shtola's reputation has been worn away by a string of fakeouts and a lack of meaningful character development. Outside the circle of scions fans, these characters are not regarded as effective, which is an increasing concern as that circle grows smaller and smaller.

Ignoring feedback from those of us who take issue with this cast is not to the benefit of the story.

It is of the highest priority to re-examine these characters from both a visual and story perspective for the health and longevity of the game. Appealing to a wider variety of tastes within the ranges of what people want to see on screen is likelier to succeed in pleasing more people. That means no more scholars, there's plenty enough of them already, and having some dark and long-haired women in the cast. Naturally, they should not be Miqote nor should they be Elezen. Au Ra and Viera are right there waiting in the wings ready to be introduced to the main cast.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

The twins already have a difficult reputation, G'raha Tia's presents an active turn-off to a decent chunk of players and shows no sign of stopping his problematic behavior, Estinien's grit was watered down, Thancred is widely regarded as having no further use in the party, and Y'shtola's reputation has been worn away by a string of fakeouts and a lack of meaningful character development. Outside the circle of scions fans, these characters are not regarded as effective, which is an increasing concern as that circle grows smaller and smaller.

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By who? What's a "decent chunk?" What's "widely regarded"? Where are you getting your numbers for the people who feel one way versus those who feel the opposite?

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

Ignoring feedback from those of us who take issue with this cast is not to the benefit of the story.

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The problem isn't that you, or anyone else, takes issue. The problem is that your solutions don't make any sense.

For instance:

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It is of the highest priority to re-examine these characters from both a visual and story perspective for the health and longevity of the game. Appealing to a wider variety of tastes within the ranges of what people want to see on screen is likelier to succeed in pleasing more people.

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Once again, gonna disagree that this is "the highest priority". More variety is fine, but pandering to a narrow set of conventionally-attractive attributes is not vital to the continued success of the game in any way.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

The twins already have a difficult reputation, G'raha Tia's presents an active turn-off to a decent chunk of players and shows no sign of stopping his problematic behavior, Estinien's grit was watered down, Thancred is widely regarded as having no further use in the party, and Y'shtola's reputation has been worn away by a string of fakeouts and a lack of meaningful character development. Outside the circle of scions fans, these characters are not regarded as effective, which is an increasing concern as that circle grows smaller and smaller.

Ignoring feedback from those of us who take issue with this cast is not to the benefit of the story.

It is of the highest priority to re-examine these characters from both a visual and story perspective for the health and longevity of the game. Appealing to a wider variety of tastes within the ranges of what people want to see on screen is likelier to succeed in pleasing more people. That means no more scholars, there's plenty enough of them already, and having some dark and long-haired women in the cast. Naturally, they should not be Miqote nor should they be Elezen. Au Ra and Viera are right there waiting in the wings ready to be introduced to the main cast.

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Regarded by whom?

G'raha Tia was the 2nd most popular character after Emet in Famitsu's March character poll and 4th after the Elpis trio in December's character poll. After G'raha, the twins have the 2nd highest popularity out of the Scions with Estinien in between them.

If the devs go by the polls, we can expect to see more twins and especially more G'raha. Emet-Selch, Hythlodeus, and Venat were the most popular characters in Japan right after Endwalker and the only reason we're not getting more of them is because they're dead. Y'shtola's popularity isn't as high as it was previously, but she's also the game's crossover character that appears as a representation of FFXIV in other games so there's no way she's retiring or dying.

I still don't understand the random push for long-haired brunettes. It would be nice to round out the cast with a character with different hair color, but it's not exactly needed and most people in this thread seem to have higher priorities.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

Regarded by whom?

G'raha Tia was the 2nd most popular character after Emet in Famitsu's March character poll and 4th after the Elpis trio in December's character poll. After G'raha, the twins have the 2nd highest popularity out of the Scions with Estinien in between them.

If the devs go by the polls, we can expect to see more twins and especially more G'raha. Emet-Selch, Hythlodeus, and Venat were the most popular characters in Japan right after Endwalker and the only reason we're not getting more of them is because they're dead. Y'shtola's popularity isn't as high as it was previously, but she's also the game's crossover character that appears as a representation of FFXIV in other games so there's no way she's retiring or dying.

I still don't understand the random push for long-haired brunettes. It would be nice to round out the cast with a character with different hair color, but it's not exactly needed and most people in this thread seem to have higher priorities.

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So he was the second liked during ShB but dropped down to 4th after EW? That's weird. :^)

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Originally Posted by Raoabolic

So he was the second liked during ShB but dropped down to 4th after EW? That's weird. :^)

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2nd liked in March of 2022. 4th liked in December of 2021. I'm not sure how you got "2nd liked during ShB" out of what I said.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

2nd liked in March of 2022. 4th liked in December of 2021. I'm not sure how you got "2nd liked during ShB" out of what I said.

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To steelman him, I think (due to the order in which you stated them), he thought you meant March 2021 and December 2021, respectively.

That's no fruit bowls.

Wait... wrong game.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

The twins already have a difficult reputation, G'raha Tia's presents an active turn-off to a decent chunk of players and shows no sign of stopping his problematic behavior, Estinien's grit was watered down, Thancred is widely regarded as having no further use in the party, and Y'shtola's reputation has been worn away by a string of fakeouts and a lack of meaningful character development. Outside the circle of scions fans, these characters are not regarded as effective, which is an increasing concern as that circle grows smaller and smaller.

Ignoring feedback from those of us who take issue with this cast is not to the benefit of the story.

It is of the highest priority to re-examine these characters from both a visual and story perspective for the health and longevity of the game. Appealing to a wider variety of tastes within the ranges of what people want to see on screen is likelier to succeed in pleasing more people. That means no more scholars, there's plenty enough of them already, and having some dark and long-haired women in the cast. Naturally, they should not be Miqote nor should they be Elezen. Au Ra and Viera are right there waiting in the wings ready to be introduced to the main cast.

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G'raha's a Turn-off and Problematic?.....Sorry man, hard doubt, Ive seen way more love for him then hate of him. Probly the only hate I see on him is with a handful of people on these forums. I dont understand what Grit Estinian apparently lost by begrudgingly joining the Scions. So we just gonna ignore that Circle is Pretty large? Because if you look at the playerbase as A WHOLE, and not just NA (Or whatever your going off of) there is no shortage of fans of the Scions. If they arnt effective, then why are they still around?
If a character's purpose to the narrative is fulfilled then they are killed off or replaced or even sidelined. The fact they arn't means they still have some relevance and something to offer.
When/If they get killed off is up to the writers, not any of us. Judge the story when it happens, not because of what you "Think" is gonna happen.


And Im sure they did that, they already planned and are prepared for another whole 10 years. With an ambition like that you need to consider alot of things.
They wont please Everybody, but Im sure they will continue to please alot of people.
WHo and what they introduce is up to them. You might want so-so, it might not happen. Ah well.
Whatever we get, I will judge if I like it or not.

What about Quina and Queen Brahne?

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Originally Posted by Lieri

What about Quina and Queen Brahne?

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Quina's gender is indeterminate. Even the game's narration is confused by them.

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Originally Posted by Cach

Improve the muscle slider, specially for girl abs.

Fit tomboy is very "in" right now it's what I'm sayin'

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I agree. I wish I could give my Viera more muscle tone, especially as a Warrior main.

I really liked minfilias character and wished they kept around. I wanted more for her character, to this day I also feel Minfilia x Thancred should've been a thing, and also it would be nice to see the antecedent still around. She could've given us more lore on Tuspamati, we could've seen her grow stronger and develop more over time. And she was soo pretty. I still wear my costume of her to this day

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Originally Posted by Elucesta

I really liked minfilias character and wished they kept around. I wanted more for her character, to this day I also feel Minfilia x Thancred should've been a thing, and also it would be nice to see the antecedent still around. She could've given us more lore on Tuspamati, we could've seen her grow stronger and develop more over time. And she was soo pretty. I still wear my costume of her to this day

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I don't know, I feel like it would be kind of creepy to have Minfilia and Thancred romantically involved because she was way younger than him and they established in the narrative he had a more parental/big brother view of her. He literally says that. That's why Ryne caught his attention in the First. She was another chance to get right where he failed with Minfilia. So, for me, it would just be very weird.

Anything new that doesn't look like a catgirl is good for me.

I always thought that Elezen looks beautiful, elegant and strong. To me, she fits a lot of the criteria for being a main character for XIV.

I dont think you quite understand what I'm trying to convey, im speaking about Min x Thancred in a sense of their relationship was never like that to begin with, they were the same age and there was romance.

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Originally Posted by leanansi

I don't know, I feel like it would be kind of creepy to have Minfilia and Thancred romantically involved because she was way younger than him and they established in the narrative he had a more parental/big brother view of her. He literally says that. That's why Ryne caught his attention in the First. She was another chance to get right where he failed with Minfilia. So, for me, it would just be very weird.

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I dont think you quite understand what I'm trying to convey, im speaking about Min x Thancred in a sense of their relationship was never like that to begin with, they were the same age and there was romanc

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Originally Posted by Elucesta

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I dont think you quite understand what I'm trying to convey, im speaking about Min x Thancred in a sense of their relationship was never like that to begin with, they were the same age and there was romanc

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Thancred at the start of ARR is 32 Minfillia is 27 also in the side stories its explained that there wasn't anything romantic between them.

Anyway I'd take more Fang, though I wouldn't call her "classical feminine" or "classical beauty". I'd even take more Merlwyb or Fordola looking types for the other races. It always amazes me how soft fem roe emotes are, but look like they'd take no nonsense from anyone. I'd like it of we could see more tomboyish looks for the softer races and some slightly rougher around the edges for the few that normally don't start that way.

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Originally Posted by ronibosch

I agree. I wish I could give my Viera more muscle tone, especially as a Warrior main.

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I think viera have about the perfect amount of tone myself. Viera look fit.

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Originally Posted by SturmChurro

I think viera have about the perfect amount of tone myself. Viera look fit.

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I know, but I wish there was a muscle tone slider so that I define her abs juuust a little bit more. Then again, my character's muscles might look the way they do because I'm a console peasant. :p

Not sure if they belong here or not but Faris from FFV has always been big nonbinary goals LOL. If we ever have a maritime expansion I would love if we had someone based on her. Just something more butch, like Fordola.

While I'm not sure if I would describe Faris that way, her latest depiction in Final Fantasy Brave Exvius has hair and clothing that would make a great addition for players who want to play as a sort of European battle commander/pirate.

She certainly has a more impressive look than the likes of Merlwyb, though if she were to be introduced as a new character I would prefer her hair color to be altered to something other than blond given how many other blonds are in the cast.

https://c.tenor.com/SqHeloYX69AAAAAd...s-scherwiz.gif

Ah, I forgot to mention actually proportional female Elezen bodies. I know it'll probably never happen, but half-Hyur/half-Elezen like Hilda would've been great.

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Originally Posted by aveyond-dreams

While I'm not sure if I would describe Faris that way, her latest depiction in Final Fantasy Brave Exvius has hair and clothing that would make a great addition for players who want to play as a sort of European battle commander/pirate.

She certainly has a more impressive look than the likes of Merlwyb, though if she were to be introduced as a new character I would prefer her hair color to be altered to something other than blond given how many other blonds are in the cast.

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Yeah! I love Amano's art but in my brain, Faris will always purple hair and a tunic. The European captain look might be good for like an end-of-expansion outfit update, though.

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Originally Posted by Rulakir

Long hair, for the love of... It doesn't matter if female characters have 200 different hairstyles if they're all short and you don't like short hair. Even the long hairstyles they do have are quite plain and not that great. Also, going to point out clipping wouldn't be such an issue if they'd offer more chest pieces that don't have high collars.

I'm also going to mald forever about how short female Au Ra are. They look completely ridiculous next to the males and, despite my love for them, I was not happy to discover the character I created was small enough for lalafells to be a threat. :P Also, tush options, please? Not even asking for J. Lo here, but something other than barely not flat would be great.

Busting out the Wildstar hairs because I loved some of the styles they offered:

https://i.imgur.com/AQKM2cz.jpg

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I still miss that game. Don't get me wrong I love FFXIV, but wildstar touched on something that nothing else in the MMO space has even come close to before or since...not to mention the epic housing system that makes FFXIV's look like a powerpoint presentation.

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Originally Posted by SannaR

Thancred at the start of ARR is 32 Minfillia is 27 also in the side stories its explained that there wasn't anything romantic between them.

Anyway I'd take more Fang, though I wouldn't call her "classical feminine" or "classical beauty". I'd even take more Merlwyb or Fordola looking types for the other races. It always amazes me how soft fem roe emotes are, but look like they'd take no nonsense from anyone. I'd like it of we could see more tomboyish looks for the softer races and some slightly rougher around the edges for the few that normally don't start that way.

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There's a such thing as shipping lol and thats not a very large age gap anyway so I'm fine with my headcanon thx!

I honestly don't mind the hair we have currently in game for us ladies but I'd like it more if we had more short yet stylized hair. Stuff akin to Paine's hair from Final Fantasy X-2

Also Thancred and Minfi are a weird thing to ship as he treats her more like a daughter if anything. Then again folks do weird stuff like Ship Aphi and Estinien here to sooo...yeah

We still need her hair though

Honestly I think all of the calls for rough or potentially "unattractive" women just wouldn't end up working out in the game, because it just doesn't fit the visual style. FFXIV is very... clean, at least when it comes to character design. Smooth faces, clear skin, I don't think it's necessarily a lack of options, just the anime adjacent character design style they chose. Personally I dislike how most characters look, and would welcome more variety, but I don't know how possible it is, because even with the graphical update I don't think they'll be overhauling the visual style itself. Raubahn is probably the only exception to this rule, but maybe that's a sign they could make it work?

There's no need for ugly females, we already have femroes and highlanders nobody plays, it's just a vocal minority, listening to them would be a waste of time and resources, like femhroths are going to be if they don't make them more like mithras than malehroths.
All the females need in this game are better, longer haircuts and less gender neutral clothing on tanks and melee dps, only casting, healing, and some times ranged are currently allowed to get cute stuffs.