[REQUEST] Can we have a more original race next time?

[Alacran]

One thing i have yet see through all of these post is anyone simply stating the uniqueness this game already offers. Hear we have a great series I love completely, every race is detailed, amazingly animated, and simply fits well with established lore, races, equipment, story. Any of the oft mentioned/ referenced games brought in to this discussion i feel have those option some have been asking for. The end result would be to make this game like those mentioned before, by this reasoning is that not attempting to ruin the established unique nature of this game? Erozea/ Erozeans have and are of many races's all of which by The Twelve, Hydaelyn, some other as to yet be named power, ect... They fit a certain look and feel to this game, the aesthetics are just as important as any number of aspects of the over all presentation.

A feral, bestial, savage race say something to the effect of this:


Now simply recall the events of the 2.0 story line quest. Picture these characters in those situations, every animation, gear made to fit.

Maybe something more regal, a noble savage if you will:



Now do either of these seem to likley want to unlock the secrets of Allag? Be embroiled in the politics of the GC's or the city states for that matter? Would they have access to all of the dances, mounts, emotes, limit break animations, genders? Would they not look out of place being invited in to Ishgard proper, House Fortemps?

There comes a time when wanting diversity for the sake of uniqueness becomes very unoriginal...

[Gilraen]

The races need to fit the gear.

Wow, saw this mentioned once then never again, even though it's the by and far obvious reason why the Au Ra are just another flavor of miqo'te. Right now every piece of equipment is built on scalable models. It's the same model, but the scaling applied changes depending on if Derplander wears it as opposed to PAL-Roe. If you have a race with a wholly unique body shape scaling ceases to be an option, you have to make all new models for every piece of visible gear in the game with maybe an exception or two like earrings. That's a lot of equipment, and not a small time sink either. Remember that they've been developing Heavensward along side content for every patch and event in the game thus far. I doubt they would have had Heavensward ready as soon as they have if they'd gone with a more unique look for the Au Ra.

[Nominous]

If we're going underwater, or having a Sea based expansion, it'd be cool to have a race somewhat resembling Zora's.



For reference, for those who don't know (shame on you). To be fair though the game already has a nice spread of races. Subtly carried out, and very believable while still being fantasy based.

[Niwashi]

2) Must fit into all current gear with only minor tweaking. Accommodating for animalistic hands, snouts, and feet is NOT "minor tweaking." Horns, funny ears, tails, and height/build differences ARE minor. In other words, it must be similar to the 5 base races.

It's only in overall shape that new races have to resemble the current ones, near enough to wear the same gear. That basically just means they have to be bipedal, with two arms and two legs in more or less the same positions a person has. A snout, for instance, would actually be far easier to accommodate than big ears or horns are, since those require adaptations on hoods and most hats and helmets, whereas a snout would only require adjustments on a tiny number of closed-faced helmets. An animal's claws/talons on hands that are shaped enough like a human's to hold a weapon wouldn't take much if any adjustment. Having limbs that are proportioned differently than a human's wouldn't require any more adjustments than lalafells already get. Having fur or scales wouldn't require any adjustments at all.

[Kaethra]

You'll note that those races give specific racial bonuses that make them perfect for min maxers.

If you're going to talk about the bonuses, talk about the penalties as well. While FFXIV doesn't have bonuses, they don't have penalties as well.

Ogres and Trolls cannot wear much of the gear in the game due to their size. Iskar can't wear plate and their AC 'bonus' doesn't make up for that. All of the races listed also have severe CHA shortage making buying and selling cost quite a bit more.

All of these penalties are mitigated later. But so are the bonuses when the other races have access to them either through gear or AAs.

I could go into what their 'extra' stats actually give them. Because you know.. more STR doesn't translate to more damage. At least not linearly. But I think I've proven my point.

[Zumi]

SE has all the statistics on what races people like. It shows that people like the cute human looking races. Mi'qote females taking the #1 spot as most popular race/gender combo. People like 95% human with 5% animal characteristics. Given that they went with lets make a cute girl character that is like 95% human and 5% dragon looking, for our dragon themed expansion. Then a lot of people liked the race and want to play them in HW.

[Niwashi]

SE has all the statistics on what races people like.

Sort of. They have statistics on which of the currently available races people like, not on what else they might have liked better. As for people playing human looking characters, it's because that's the only thing we have to choose from. When it comes to things like how many of the people playing Miqo'te are doing so because they're cute versus how many are playing them because ears and a tail as as near as we can get to a more bestial race, nobody can do more than guess at that. SE seems to be guessing they're the most popular because they're cute and moe, and there are certainly some people who play them for that reason. I for one would much rather my Miqo'te looked more like a Ronso, but that option just isn't available.

[Duelle]

Reading the WoW forums I get the impression that some of the players who are currently quitting would play FFXIV if everything wasn't so cute and teenage looking. Race options are directly affecting their decision of buying the game. Would it really be that bad to see "ugly" characters running around, especially if it was only one of the clans of a hypothetical new race?

Well, the guys that played horde did identify better with what they called the "ugly" races. Others are pulled in by the faction leaders and notable characters attached to that race (all the Sylvannas fans rolling undead, all the Thrall fans rolling orcs and so on). There's also the guys that stayed horde since vanilla and originally rolled their characters for the overpowered racials and never race-changed into anything else.

What I'm getting at is that I doubt an "ugly" race would pull those guys here from WoW. It may, but I find it somewhat unlikely.

[KisaiTenshi]

One thing i have yet see through all of these post is anyone simply stating the uniqueness this game already offers. Hear we have a great series I love completely, every race is detailed, amazingly animated, and simply fits well with established lore, races, equipment, story. Any of the oft mentioned/ referenced games brought in to this discussion i feel have those option some have been asking for. .

No game will allow a player to play anything that isn't a Biped (or a vehicle.) This, as stated multiple times is because the animation system (eg how legs and arms work) require it to work that way. Likewise the monster animations for the human-sized beast tribes are all essentially the same.

The detail in FFXIV goes above and beyond. Take a close look at the earrings and necklaces... any other game and those wouldn't even be shown.

1) "Ugly" gritty, dirty, western-style characters. So many WoW-clones do this and quite frankly I can't figure out why anyone would want to play a WoW clone only with de-saturated colors. Yet the TESO fans really really wanted to not look colorful like WoW

This is what TESO actually looks like:


As I mentioned earlier in the thread "same body on every character, regardless of age and race"

2) Japanese games almost always align with cute, even when they are trying to be gritty:

Wizardry Online

So there's your different body sizes, and in this game every piece of gear "fits everyone" but they are all model-specific. Which also means that there is very little unique gear other than these special cash-shop costume items. Wizardy has nearly no non-combat animations (all cutscenes are just your character doing the idle wobble pose.) In fact, asset reuse even applies to dungeons.



3) Korean games tend to not really care:


Every race wearing the same outfit. Tera's animations are essentially identical between every race, even though they have more variation in the actual shapes. Tera's conversation (eg with story/npc's) system is non-existent and last time I played it was just text boxes.


http://i.imgur.com/kIo9z.jpg (This image is super-wide)
Here's GW2, same idea... essentially every animation between every race is the same. And for whatever reason people love to compare Tera and GW2. I never played it, so I can only comment based on video/screenshots.



Then there's Archage. Which the game models are actually pretty capable, if not terribly unique looking (The Firran IMO are rather awful looking) but just about everyone in the game looks the same, because there's not a very much variety in gear. What is really awful are the cutscenes. While they are certainly better than say, Wizardry Online's "stand still and wobble", they seem to only serve the purpose for the jiggle physics, and most players just turned the "cutscene style conversations" off.



Aion, only has two races. But they have the most tunable models among all the games (you can create your own face/build.) But they still only have one animation set. So... less races = more customization.



4) FFXIV's customization starts and ends with clothing dye.



...and some costumes.

Like... when you look at every other game, at least FFXIV's races have uniqueness to them. It would probably be better if faces had more tuneables and we could have different age/weight builds, but then there are other things to consider, like how cutscenes work (Lalafells get some rather messed up videos during the Hildibrand storyline for example, where as on every other race the objects being thrown go in a straight line.) FFXIV's cutscenes are the best cutscenes I've seen in any game i've played to date. Mabinogi was the only other game that the cutscenes were actually interwoven into the storyline using the character models, and not just a series of one-sided conversations with a faceless NPC.

So the point is, the reason we don't get more variety in races is because it's not just a simple substitution. Everything has to be considered.
- Gear
- Cutscenes
- Animations used in and out of battle
- Voices (when present)

At some point in the future, when the game assets can be streamed, and players aren't being gouged by their ISP's for data usage, maybe we will see games that have far more variety. But today, I don't think you're going to get much support for a game that needs to ship on a 1TB hard drive.

[Nadirah]

Scales, fur, tails, fins on the head and more obviously animal faces would work. Long claws on both feet and hands.

Hell, Aion Asmodian tail is actually a mane down the middle of the back and they wear "heels" because that spike is actually a claw.

Miqo and Au Ra are human girls with tails and ears. Vanguard did similar (human body, animal head) and folks complained there too.

What people are asking for is something that isn't very obviously a Hume with different ears/tail/skin color.

Now maybe if Au Ra were completely covered head to toe in those scales, making them look more alien, they'd pass.