Dear Devs, please bring the Male and Female Xaela Au-Ra closer to this artwork

[myahele]

For those who wan't claws the closest one if getting the "Claws of the Beast" from Gold Saucer for 30,000 Points

[MilesSaintboroguh]

It's a shame they didn't stick to the dragon theme for the Au Ra, but with the main theme of 3.0 being about the war on dragons, I can see why the change was needed.

[Fortified]

I actually prefer Au Ra's like they are now. Plus the males in the OP looks way too much like the Castanic from Tera.

[SarcasmMisser]

I wanna take whatever the OP is smoking that makes them think SE are going to take a U turn on character designs because someone on their forums is unhappy with it.

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I sincerely hope you will consider this. I can't speak for anyone else, but I would even be happy to let you guys "Lock" the Xaela option until Patch 3.1, to give you guys extra time to fine-tune them.

Like this, are the devs like taxi drivers and we can issue such insane demands from the back seat?

[hairpinlegs]

To be honest, people on the forums are always skeptical of change, and I honestly don't know why. Like I said, they rebuilt the ENTIRE GAME once before, and pessimism doesn't help anything.

Yeah they did, but they aren't going to use time and money better spent elsewere to redesign something which is already pretty much done because a minority of people don't like it. What you view as pessimism is just realism.

[kyuven]

To be honest, people on the forums are always skeptical of change, and I honestly don't know why. Like I said, they rebuilt the ENTIRE GAME once before, and pessimism doesn't help anything.

Which was a huge gamble, cost more money than most of us will make in a decade, and took more than a year to complete.
They also already went through the process of designing, refining, and testing the Au Ra. They mentioned they've been accounting for the horns in all of the armor designs since 2.1.
Practicality trumps all, and change costs money.
Again, just making the more "monstrous" hands would require nearly every single piece of hand gear in the entire game to be completely redone to accommodate them.
And you want all this done, every single piece of hand armor and many pieces of chest and leg armor, completely remapped and redesigned for a single race just so you can have big claws on your dragon lady.
There's a reason this idea never made it past the concept art stage.
It's important, before making suggestions/demands like this, to take a step back and ask yourself: WHY would they change this between the concept art and final release?
Do not think "they should" until you take the time to ask yourself that question, and properly answer it.
Concept art is not a road map. It's a collection of artwork to give the teams ideas as to which direction they want to go. What we've seen were just the ones they actually liked, you can bet there are plenty that were hated. Hell many of the artists don't even have the same drawing style as that which the game will be in.

[Tiggy]

Too late in Development. Not going to happen ever. /thread

[Belhi]

You know one reason I don't see them doing this? Because apart from the Midlander/Highlander thing, no other race has any real differences apart from coloring and lore for their separate clans. If it was way back they might have been able to do something though I still don't see them doing claw hands simply because of the amount of work modifying armour for the hands. However now if they did go out of their way to modify one clan it would lead to people demanding more variety for the other races as well which is probably a mountain of workload SE would rather avoid.

The modifications being asked for aren't minor. It would require reworking everything from animations to gear sets to fit the new build less clipping issues and such occur.

I think people are just going to have to accept Au Ra as they are now. Maybe the next race they introduce will fit the desired concept more.

[kyuven]

You know one reason I don't see them doing this? Because apart from the Midlander/Highlander thing, no other race has any real differences apart from coloring and lore for their separate clans.

Not EXACTLY true. The Miqo'te Keepers and Seekers have different proportions in their ears, and their eyes are completely different. Keepers also have fangs, whereas Seekers don't. I'm also fairly certain there are tail styles exclusive to one or the other.
There are actually a lot of little differences between most of the races beyond skin color, but NONE of these things affect equipment and weapons, which is the big thing when it comes to designing races.
SE puts a lot of interesting detail into the races, but they can't deviate too strongly from the base 5 race body types without having to remake every single piece of armor in the game, which is a lot more work than players seem to think.

[REPROBEAN_CHILD]

Not to be a downer, but the protruding horns seem like it will be impossible to put head equipment on. And as far as their other concept art goes (when they looked more dragonic) I noticed they looked a like like a beast tribe than a playable race. If anything, they looked like a combination of the Ixal and the Amalj'aa. Also, they were clearly dragons in the concept, but Square seemed to want to make the Au Ru more ambiguous between dragons and demons.

Imo, I think all the races in this game ARE humans or at least related somehow (that's why they look similar.) That's probably why they're called "Races," suggesting they are connected in some shape or form. If they were tribes like the beast tribes, there'd be more distinctions (noticed how vastly different the beast tribes are to each other?)