New Race Announced! The Au Ra

[reivaxe]

Some ppl is indeed defending the design in a wrong way, it's not a surprise we have a lot of forum users here that act that way, it's not only this thread. But anyone defending the actual design is right, it's done, making the models take a good amount of time of work and testing, it can't be changed now, at least if you want the expansion for this spring. Some players just don't like the new race, it's normal, we are a lot of here and there's no way they can please everyone with a single race, but that's how you should take it, instead of asking for options that are impossible unless you delay the whole expansion, you should just keep giving feedback, that way the next expansion will please those who want something more beast like, instead of those who like more human like looks.

Anyway, i paid for the nico nico stream and i remember they saying that this race would have a lot of options for character creation, may be they could please even more people.

Gonna call bull on the bolded.
For people asking for more scales you wouldn't actually have to change the MODEL or animations at all, you could just make it a texture and keep the plate scales they have now ... simple as as that. Would be like this, you don't have to add MUCh to the model they have now to get a more scaly, beast like look to the skin. That's something they may have planed for now or may add in if enough players make a fuss about it this early on in the reveal.

As for not being able to please everyone with one race, I disagree with the notion that that's grounds to not TRY to please more people. I think that the humans are a great example of this. You have two tribes of humans that look fairly different and cover the range of people who want bigger, bad ass women and men and those who want cute or smaller and such people. They could have tried the same here, make one tribe what they are now and the other with bigger, bad ass women and more beastly options for both tribes.

And if they truly DO have a ton of options for the new race that covers things that some people want already then that's great ... but we haven't seen this yet so we can't just assume that.

If you hate that kinda sexual dimorphism, play a Lalafel?

Seriously, what's the kick on this about? It's the only race with such a difference, and so what, it's a fantasy race.

As for the more options, I haven't heard, no to more options, I just heard people say, it's likely due to it being considered a waste of time and money. Look to TERA. AMAN (either gender) and Barraka are not popular races.

Also, it's to late to really change a race that people already play and enjoy. Would have to be a new one, for the cat idea.

Why play just Lalafel? I can play any other race in this game and have less sexual dimorphism than wuts presented in this race ... cause no other race has the default height difference at 2 heads.
It's a fantasy race ... but this game isn't exactly drowning in race options. So this new race at the very least offers a new and interest body shape for males and ... not so much at all for female characters.
So you heard people being ok with it because they think the huge company behind this game thinks it would be a waste of time and money. I have heard people actively against more options because they don't like looking at "ugly characters" and they use money and resources as their defense for why asking for it is being ungrateful and whiny.

And I take your TERA example and counter you a GW2! From wut I see on the census, sure, 50%ish of players play the human race or the big human race (norn). But the other 50%? They play the plaint people race that have options for crazy bark faces and plaint hair and glowing body patterns/ the creepy looking lil people race of big headed deamon things/ the ugly cat monster race that runs on all 4s. And they play those 3 in equal parts pretty much. And that's a "b2p" game .. not a sub based game. They somehow have the time, money and resources to handle ugly cat monster race that runs on all 4s yet that would be a "waste" in this game.

As for the cat idea it wouldn't make sense to make a 2nd cat race when you could just give people the option with in the current race. Giving the option wouldn't negatively effect current kitty people. Heck, they could make it a 3rd tribe.

Except people already play those "good looking" races because they're already available. So, they are a population that already have something that they like and want to play with. The population of players that would like more variety and choice, do not have this option, thus SE is turning away players from their game because they prefer to keep everyone a normal boring human.

This.

To me it seems clear that this isn't a race added in to draw in new people ... it's a race for people who are more so happy with what they have and might wanna make a buff human dude with horns or turn their kitty girl into a ... horned girl. It's strange to me that they don't seem to want to give much incentive to using the Fantasia in the cash shop. Making furry cat people options with coat patterns and more cat features alone would likely make tons of people grab one. I'd use one right now cause I made a much better roe alt that I want as my main but I'm not sure if I should bother if it's just to change the face and skin and not for, say, body shape options as well.

A sign that they truly want to tap into untapped markets would be them making a race that's not like anything we have now ... like wuts in many other MMOs as well as the only MMO I have heard them say is something they should be worried about (Again, that's EQN. A game where players can be humans or sexy elves/ dark elves or dwarfs or huge Orgs or Big Pretty cat people who run on all 4s or Iksar so far with the possibly of being anything from Frog or Rat people to who knows wut in the final game)

[Nominous]

Having variety is nice, but spending time and resources on something that only a small percentage of people would play is ultimately not worth it.

People are proven to pretty much only play the ridiculously cute, average, or 'badass' looking races. Some games don't have races at all, no matter how variable. I'd say that this is a pretty decent addition, considering that it's lore involved, and gives us a more 'edgy' race to play. It looks different enough to where the average player might not choose it, but not so different that nobody wants to play it because of how ugly they are.

[Nestama]

Having variety is nice, but spending time and resources on something that only a small percentage of people would play is ultimately not worth it.

Then SE shouldn't have bothered making Binding Coil at all, if we're going by that logic .-.

[Coombah]

Yeah. The reason given was that a simple method to change your entire appearance including your race, such as a simple potion, can't really work out in the world because then say a criminal can commit a crime then drink a Fantasia, turn into an entirely different person and race, and get away with it for life. It's different from glamours because those can be dispelled and it's only an illusion, and dragon magic because dragon magic. It just gives you the courage to bring out the person you always had in you, ie. it's just a placebo and you're still a lala pretending to be a Roe or whatever, you're just believing hard enough to make it true in your eyes. At least that's the explanation given by Ferne.

I would like to see something official on this, in the item description it states that you turn into a new man or woman.

[Arcturius]

I'll be server first AuRa dark knight!

I'm with you on that one.

[Nominous]

Then SE shouldn't have bothered making Binding Coil at all, if we're going by that logic .-.

I guess the better sentence would have included the fact that you want it to appeal to people, as opposed to just existing for the sake of variety. That's what I really meant by the statement. But even still, Coil in general is only "A small percentage" of the population for a few weeks, then it's fairly common to see people with experience in every new turn. Logic still holds up too, because people want to compete to have the best gear, not many people care to play a race that's ugly with a fanbase like this lol.

Not to say the entire community wouldn't, but yeah.

[Yukiko]

Ok...
I wouldnt be surprised any more if we can add wings on "Au Ra". While randomly thinking around there is a high possibility that SE did not show the wings on purpose! Maybe we will see on benchmark what yoshi ment with "a lot customisation"

[Nestama]

words

And yet people still play as Roegadyn, Galka, Pandas and Charr. While some people may see them as ugly (or not like them at all for one reason or another), others will find them to look incredibly adorable (I myself find Galka to be incredibly cute). If SE only appeal to the audience who only want cute/cool anime stuff, then this game is only going to have Hyurs (and Elezen) with extra bits here and there as playable races.

[Nominous]

And yet people still play as Roegadyn, Galka, Pandas and Charr. While some people may see them as ugly (or not like them at all for one reason or another), others will find them to look incredibly adorable (I myself find Galka to be incredibly cute). If SE only appeal to the audience who only want cute/cool anime stuff, then this game is only going to have Hyurs (and Elezen) with extra bits here and there as playable races.

There's no one race that absolutely nobody plays. On Expansion, however, I think it's more important that they focus on things that a bigger crowd would enjoy, than the niche. To be fair, in the future I definitely see them doing some adventurous designs, but for now, this makes the most sense in lore, and appeal.

[Sylve]

The problem with peoples demands for a fully beastlike race is gear.

I'll point you to a game that has Cowpeople, Wolfpeople and Spacegoats.
Boots look horrible on all 3 races, as their hooves/claws stick out the bottom in such a way that looks like the boots just got cut in half and wrapped around their ankles.
Leg and Chest armor is just a texture pasted directly onto the characters skin, so for the Cows and Wolf people, it looks stretched and distorted. Helmets are even more amusing, with the horns and snouts clipping right through the helm. Often the Helm doesn't even fit properly on the head (parts of the Helms often just vanish into the Taurens hump). Hell, over there, theres no such thing as a half robe. Putting on a robe type piece will make your legs vanish entirely, and if you pan your camera around, all you end up seeing is a pair of floating feet.

Here in XIV, each armor piece is modeled in such a way that looks like your character is wearing it. These aren't painted on textures, they react to weather and movement.
In order for us to get a race with a general shape that is decidedly inhuman (lets use the Amal'jaa for example), They would have to go back over every single piece of armor they ever made, and create a whole new version of it to fit that body shape.
And they would have to do that to every single piece of gear in the game every time a new inhuman style race was released. Do you even realize how much modeling and animation work that would take?
Armchair experts seem to believe its "changing a line of code and its all hunky dory!" but the truth is that there is a ton of man hours that would go into the requirement to make modifications to fit inhuman bodies to every single bit of gear ever released.

Using a basic human shape is not 'lazy' its practical. Do you want Heavensward in 2015 or 2020?

TL;DR, we do not yet know the extent of customization available for the Au Ra. It may be entirely possible to get a skin effect that makes you look scaled from head to toe. We wont know till we get the benchmark tool.