UCI Research Question: How did you decide on your race, gender, and appearance in FF?

Hi everyone! I am a student at the University of California, Irvine taking a class on video games that focuses on the study and analysis of games as art objects, cultural artifacts, gateways to virtual worlds, educational aids, and tools for persuasion and social change.

I am currently conducting social science research on MMOs. FFXIV is my first MMO and I am loving it so far! Right now, I am very curious in learning more about the various ways people express themselves in a virtual world.

If you have time to answer this research question I would really appreciate it:

What were the main factors that contributed to how you chose your race, gender, and appearance?

Gender: I'm a girl, my character is a girl because she's me.

Race: I love cats, and love adding cat ears to everything, plus my persona was a catgirl.

Appearance: Again, persona. She was a hot-pink haired (like my hair IRL from age 15/2005 to like a year ago when I stopped dying it) catgirl in a black hoodie and jeans. So I tried to get as close to hot pink as I could.
Went with Sun Kitty because I didn't like that I couldn't take off the face paint for moon kitty.

Name: See Signature.

Thank you for contributing to my research project! I can relate with you on a lot of those aspects as well. I chose a female because my character is also me lols~ I had also chose the cat race because i honestly think kittens are so cute (am considering changing to bunny girl tho). As for appearance I chose to go for a look that matches my main class, White Mage, thus being witch with white clothing! My name is just a fancy Italian name thingy based off of myself :)

Catgirls just best represent my gremlin-like tendencies.

Chose moonkeepers 'cause non-human skintones are interesting.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by chrisalyn

What were the main factors that contributed to how you chose your race, gender, and appearance?

---

Race
I picked a Lala mainly because my fiance talked me into trying this game. I was very reluctant and wasn't taking it seriously, so I picked the silliest race (and because this way she'd find my character cute~)


Gender
I went with a male because I am a male.
Also because if I went with a female I knew I'd start to feel like a creep with how into customizing my avatars I usually get.


Appearance
Before I got the game installed, I had already decided on my appearance. I was under the impression facial options weren't race specific, and I wanted to use Roe face parts to make a Lala look like Sexy Squidward (again, I wasn't taking this seriously). Unfortunately, that's not how the game works. So I just picked all the closest options and called it a day.



Good luck on your research~

Honestly I havent decided i'm always tossing between three. But ill answer you question with all 3.

Gender: im tranfem irl and all the outfits i love are locked to it anyways.

Race part 1:
Bunnys are closest to my irl height so helps me think of unique fashion irl. That's all for bunny's

Lalafells: closet to my personality in terms of looks, voice, heighy etc as a little irl
Finnally
Au'ra i like because of my ancestory has alot of natives Americans so its nice to expiernce it in game sort of..

Appearance: honestly i change this alot because i cant get my color mix that has equal contrast aka Purple/blue or pink/orange.

Honestly i like many different fashions still havent decided on my main look there.

Name: randomed last name first i just picked what would sound nice for a song type

I started this game as a male lala because I thought that a little potato man with a mustache was the single funniest thing I had seen that day.

Then in 2015 Bloodborne came out and a friend and I fanta'd and name changed into cosplay characters, but I'm the only one who stuck to it. While I stayed female, I bounced around a lot just because none of the other races brought me as much joy as my little potato boy. That was until Viera! I am a sucker for both Tactics and wood elves so it has just been a perfect fit.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LisSquid

I started this game as a male lala because I thought that a little potato man with a mustache was the single funniest thing I had seen that day.
[...]
I bounced around a lot just because none of the other races brought me as much joy as my little potato boy.

---

Do you have any pics of your OG Lala?

Male in-game, also male IRL.

Mostly I'm interested into Male Highlander and Male Roegadyn, sometimes I swapped between these two.

The appearance I use mostly open, not full plate armor style, mostly to show the muscles :p

Name is mostly random.

I usually try to reproduce D&D (or other similar games) characters in game. I find playing said characters a lot more engaging that way even though I don't do rp. The majority of 'em are male even though I'm a RL woman. Couldn't tell you why I prefer male characters, I just find them more interesting, I guess?

The first character I made was actually a Male Hyur, finished the whole story with him. I then got the idea of making an alt on a different data center to play with RL friends and thinkered around the character creator on and off for days, trying a bunch of different races/appearances until I came up with this absolute gem of a little catboy. It was love at first quest and he ended up becoming my forever character. I think the ear wiggling is was really cented the race choice for me ;)