FFXIV 2nd expansion: Viera-like race still a possibility?

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Originally Posted by Khalithar

The very same thing could happen with any new race they add. I believe that the free Fantasia players got from their HW pre-orders encouraged that to.

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Yes and no. Look at how things ended up during the release of 2.0. Two new "half-races" were added "Female Roegadyn" and "Male Miqo'te" were added and players got a free Fantasia for their 30 day Veteran reward. Male Miqo'te was and still is one of the most popular male races while female Roegadyn was and still is the least.

But people still play as them. If SE only make what is popular, every single female is going to be obnoxiously cute/adorable, while males will be given special treatment (new unique look).

Doesn't that sound, I dunno... a little sexist?

Female roegadyn reporting in.
I would not have subscribed to FFXIV if they had not made female roegadyn. I don't play little races (lalafell), I don't like elves, I don't play humans, Miqo'te are fanservice, Au Ra have weird sexual dimorphism that freaks me out, and I would not play a male roe.
Female roegadyn is literally the only combination I am willing to play as.

Let's say for a moment that only 2% of players are female roegadyn. Sounds like a very small number. However, first take into consideration that at present there are 12 gender/race combos. If every race/gender combo was equal, that would factor to about 8.3% for each. However, we also realize that this perfect equality in the population is impossible and it's not wrong or bad for some race/gender populations to be more popular than other. Additionally, every MMO has 1 or 2 races that drastically out populate everyone else.

2% on a business level is not a small number, not when the 2% is coming from numbers in the millions.

What I am ultimately getting at that I agree that diversity in new races should be prioritized. When you introduce a new race two potential things could happen

1. An existing player gets excited because the new race is new so why not experience the FoM? Or they might permanently like it more than the old. Doesn't matter either way. An existing player changes to new race: SE mostly just gains hype from this. (Which is admittedly powerful)

2. A player who was not interested in playing before now has a reason to play. Seems like a dumb reason not to play a game, but it seems video game companies are constantly underestimating how much players value their own personalized characters.

As of right now, taking advantage of Point #2 would be advantageous for SE as all the races currently in game are just humans with slight variations. With that said, SE, please give us a beast race or monster race of some kind. And make the females look equally beastly. None of this "men are fierce, women are cute" only stuff. I want to be a fierce monster lady! Rawr!

http://fantasitrade.com/Images/Wood%20Golem.png
This is what i want: A Female Wood Golem And then A Male Golem like my fiance suggested in the forums which his name is Kalifas Artexas, you can find his post about it as well.
http://compositeeffects.com/mystore/...01-600x800.jpg

With different crystals and gems for the skin:

http://creative-harmonics.org/scienc...mages/gems.jpg

we have seen enough underwear with miqote and aura so no thanks
something different would be good

I love Vieras

But, the problem is...

- The concept art is much more appealing than the actual model in game - take Elezen females with their grotesquely large shoulders and tiny heads (that get even tinier when they choose smaller heights)

- A lot of people will race change to Viera from not only Cat-girls, Au Ra and Midlanders but also from the less popular races - we'd just end up with Cat-girls, Midlanders, Au Ra and Vieras running around - that awkward moment in 4-man dungeons when you meet your 3 doppelgängers.


What I'd rather see...

- Addition of new body shapes (please do something about those Elezen shoulders)

- Addition of new faces (please do something about those tiny Elezen heads)

- More attention on current (minus Au Ra) base emotes - not to change them, but just to pay more attention to smaller movements (I notice a lot straight arms moving from shoulder joints rather than elbow, wrist and finger movements)

I feel like they could add in a Viera race that leaned more towards bestial than human.
Have the rabbit ears begin from where human ears would rather than the Miqo ears being on top of the head. Similar to how the Au Ra horns do it.
Their heads could even be slightly elongated with animal features in the eye/mouth/nose structure.
Make them incredibly tall, visibly taller than Male Roes or Male Au Ra, while also making them quite slim.
Have the legs be reverse jointed, leg armor would only need minor adjustments to look right.

For males, simply make them shorter and more muscular, with a very noticeable posture difference.
That'd give them a profile that is instantly recognizable next to our present races without them simply being Miqos with rabbit ears.

Though i wouldn't be against that Wolf Race either :P
Even though that would require some extensive reworking of Head, hand and feet armor.

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Originally Posted by Nestama

But people still play as them. If SE only make what is popular, every single female is going to be obnoxiously cute/adorable, while males will be given special treatment (new unique look).

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I'm trying to explain the problem that SE is caught in. When around only 2%* (and likely less) of PCs are using a character model creating options for that percentage of the player base has less priority than pleasing the larger groups of the total population.

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Doesn't that sound, I dunno... a little sexist?

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Its the player base being sexist not the Dev team. The player base would be the ones making judgements based on the appearance of that sexual variation of the race not the dev team.

The dev team has a lot of ideas for new races, but they can't implement them all because of development costs. So they develop what marketing data believes will be the most profitable.

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Originally Posted by MsCroc

As of right now, taking advantage of Point #2 would be advantageous for SE as all the races currently in game are just humans with slight variations. With that said, SE, please give us a beast race or monster race of some kind. And make the females look equally beastly. None of this "men are fierce, women are cute" only stuff. I want to be a fierce monster lady! Rawr!

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Creating new races is not cheap. If a new race increases the player population by 1% but cost more than 1% of the budget to implement then creating the race was non-profitable and that budget could have been better spent elsewhere.

I don't like it, but that does not mean I don't understand where they are coming from.

*2014 Census puts Roegadyn at 5% of the character base in both JP and NA/EU. Combine that with 41% female characters in NA/EU and you get roughly 2% of the characters being Roegadyn Females by the data shared. Actual ratio for male:female Roes could lean much more to the male side.

Then SE shouldn't make a new race at all. That's honestly the only solution to keep them from making the exact same thing with new bits, or making females exclusively cute.

I am 1000% sure I could convince many, many friends to play this game if there were Ivalician races. Just sayin'.