Au Ra physiology and other lore.

[Cilia]

[Wall of Text 4: Wall of Text's Revenge]

Ultimately, the thing about the warfare is that because the Xaela live on a steppe with more scarce resources, they can't afford to expend as much energy. So the smaller size of the women is an advantage in a certain way; even if it makes them physically weaker, there can be more female fighters out there because they just don't require the upkeep a male soldier does. Besides, you're conflating muscle size with strength again; the two are connected but not entirely dependent on one another. While the women are lithe, there's nothing stating they're incapable warriors who regularly lose battles to men due to their smaller stature.

I don't claim to know why they made the Xaela the "original" Au Ra social system and the Raen the "modified" version but developed their designs dependent on the more urbanized clan. My best guess would be that by making big and tough males who appeal to Western ideals of masculinity and prim and proper females who appeal to Eastern ideals of femininity, they hoped to minimize complaints and satisfy a greater group of people than if they went with just one of those two groups alone. At the end of the day everyone cannot be pleased no matter how hard they work or what they do, and the Devs (supposedly) ran themselves ragged getting this expansion done. I'm willing to overlook the lack of a "tough" option for Au Ra women in lieu of this for a number of reasons.

The thing is, the bigger they make the model the easier it is to notice the pixels and imperfections in it unless it's designed to be that big. So if they made the Au Ra women have a great height range, anything outside of a certain range would granulate clothing and armor. Yes, it can be done, but the results might not necessarily be pretty.

No, none of the clans present in the game are "special snowflake" material. While they might be kind of quirky, they don't break the rules of the world in that regard. The "eugenics for taller people" clan is the only one that might fall under this; everything else, from using cloud- and wavekin clicks in their speech, to having their skin tone adapt to the environment, to being able to hold their breath for long periods of time, and even the frequent twin birthrate clan isn't too farfetched and doesn't modify their biology to suit. Declaring "my Au Ra is from a special, undiscovered clan where the women are as tall as the men" breaks what's already been established about their biology (and even what's possible in-game) to make them what you want instead of accepting what they are.

I don't know why you would think the Roegadyn show greater sexual dimorphism than the Au Ra. The only real difference between Roegadyn sexes is the muscle mass (and even then, female Roegadyn are comparatively more muscular than the females of other races, excepting perhaps Highlander Hyur). Women are about as tall as the men, maybe a little shorter for realism. And while they're not the most-played race, I've run into enough Roegadyn PCs to say they're by no means unpopular. Elezen, on the other hand, I don't know if anyone really likes them because they're kind of noodly (in my opinion).

There is plenty of doubt that the next female PC race will be "cute girls." Until they show a design we don't know what they have in mind, or if they even have anything in mind at all. Declaring that Au Ra women point to an endless steam of cute / moé / nadeshiko designs for the females of new races is jumping the gun waaaaaaaaay early. If they implement another race and if the women are cute waifs again without a similar structure for the men, I'll pick up that phone.

I just finished the DRK pre-Heavensward storyline, and it's impossible to say who or what Fray really is without spoiling pretty much everything. Suffice to say, though, I'm quite glad I did the DRK storyline prior to properly touching Heavensward; it makes sense, in a certain way.

An' don't worry about it. I appreciate the offer, but like the blue hair with white highlights of my original Highlander avatar it's grown on me. :P

[Samcaesar]

"Words, words, words." ~Hamlet

And yet there was a tribe who thought the idea of making them bigger was a great idea, or the plethora of other things that don't make any sense from a "Let's not waste resources" such as carrying your elders on your shoulders or going nearly vegan (Which is interesting, as it implies they're enough shrubbery in the Othard Steppe to allow such a lifestyle and also result in large men). If resources were so limited and the smaller size would be an advantage.. Well why aren't there any tribes who focus on having the smallest men with quick and nimble bodies? You can't say resources are scarce whenever there's also a tribe who hunts mammoths (And uses their bones for weapons no less), it might not incredibly plentiful, but seeing as how a lot of tribes emphasize numbers and getting to have a massive population I doubt keeping their people well fed is the biggest concern. Continued strength exercises generally results in larger muscles, it's literally how muscles work, they're not some loosely correlative thing, they've very much so connected. Using muscles repeatedly for strength exercises tears the muscles and makes them regrow causing muscular growth. It's like saying a child would do better in a fight against a grown man, sure they might win if they've got some sort of advantage say a ranged weapon that they're capable of actually using, but in terms of battles of strength (Say like sword hits sword for example), which I'm sure occurs in the Xaela's environment, the person who's stronger will do better. If you've got more strength you can preform things much better, from using a sling to throw a javelin, to pulling a bow, or swinging a sword. If you do those enough, you should be developing larger muscles. Likewise, how would you even begin to explain the tribes that are all male or all female? Those two tribes couldn't exist if the sexes were that different, and yet they are. I feel you're overestimating exactly how useful being small stature wise would be in something like war.

See, what I'd what the Japanese and other regional demographics say with regards to the two sexes, either way making it so one half of a race appeals to one regional demographic specifically while the other appeals to a different one isn't a good idea, now make it so that one clan appeals to one demographic while another appeals to a different one? Sure, at least people have more options. They could have done more, heck like I said, the Au Ra's design was settled a year before the launch of the expansion, if that's not enough time to develop a different look for Xaela, god forbid SE ever add another race because color palette swaps aren't a good thing. Heck, delay the ability to make Xaela while giving them a unique model, sure people would've been upset, as would I, but at least you'd satisfy more people long term instead of the people who've just gotta pray that next time SE makes a race that's more appealing to them, which is a gamble that's incredibly risky.

Cool, SE ought let us who want tall Auri women settle for a less attractive model, if we've got to settle at least let us settle with something a bit closer to what we want at our expense. Don't want a tall Auri women with a less graphically nice model? Don't make one and keep it at they are normally. Sure it'd look bad on SE to have a model that looks ugly, but perhaps they should've designed the model to compensate for it in the first place. I wish the glitch was still in game so I could at least try to get as high as I could to see how bad it looked, because I'm fairly sure it wouldn't look bad. The only question is why is keeping the girls short so important to SE? If they just made the model work with a massive height range, they still could've kept it like "Au Ra have gross amounts dispropotion in body mass between Auri males and females (Most of the time)" and more people end up satisfied.

Why is it so hard to believe that there's something in the world of Hydaelyn that would boost the heights of the girl Au Ra? If just living in snowy environments is enough to turn a tribe's skintone to a reddish rust hue, then perhaps there's something in the world that would trigger height growth in the women, maybe a diet that increases the levels of testosterone in the Au Ra would allow it. I mean, how would you even begin to define one of those "Unknown" tribes if not something unique and gimmicky? I mean.. Why is an extremely high birthrate, lung capacity expanding to the point where it's notably unique, or eugenics for taller people reasonable and don't "break the rules of the world" and yet "women who are tall" is literally impossible? Plenty of people just use the in game model as just a basis, considering I've seen people roleplay older characters or fat ones, neither of which is really too possible to make in game, yet they're still allowed. The issue with height is it's just far more noticeable than those traits. I'm sure I'm not alone with wanting tall Au Ra women, and again I don't see what's the problem with giving the player more options.

The body of a Roegadyn women is literally half the thickness of the men, they have much more narrow faces (Or well less blocky faces), skeletons probably look entirely different, facial hair, height is still a thing (They only share 3 inches of height, when a male Roegadyn is 100 and a female Roegadyn at 0 have a 1'3 difference in height which is still a lot, just not as much as the 2'5 that the Au Ra have), . What's the two biggest things with regards to sexual dimorphism and the Au Ra? Height and muscle mass. Height in this game is far more noticeable than muscle mass however, which is why most people don't see the Roegadyn to be very sexually dimorphic. Well, that and coupled with the fact that I can assure you the "sexual dimorphism" most people want is the kind where the guys are big and strong and the girls are cute and petite, hence why the Au Ra look that way instead of the plethora of other options they could've done. They're unpopular enough that SE doesn't consider it worthwhile to make a clan of a race more closely resemble them (And yet the Auri men have more in common with Elezen men than they do with any other race >.>). Why would SE create a race with tall and strong women and cute and petite men, especially whenever they had the opportunity to do so with the Au Ra but didn't?

How do you figure that? SE already stated their reason and it's unusual for a company to do what doesn't garner them money either immediately or with higher certainty. I don't think so, in fact I'd say by most people giving SE a positive response with regards to the Auri women, it's only encouraging it, after all why bother doing something different if the nadeshiko-esque look continues to be popular. Continued negative response would be the only way to prevent it, otherwise you get into situations where SE continues to make races with cute girls and whatever guys, and knows they can get away with it because people are just gonna shrug it off. I mean, personally, if they introduce another race with cute waifs, I'm going to be complaining, the issue isn't the sexual dimorphism, it's the fact that it's cute waifs to add to the other list of cute waif options, when that doesn't solve the "No one plays Roegadyn/Highlander" problem, in fact it makes it even worse as the game grows.

Oh darn, but I love spoilers! Shame other people exist on the forums who don't.

Kay! Have fun.

[Cilia]

[Wall of Text IV: A New Wall]

I'm not overestimating the uses of small size, you're just underestimating the cost of being larger. A larger person requires exponentially more resources to sustain themselves and tires faster than a smaller person. That's why smaller sizes are advantageous. Yes, there might be melee combat on the Othardian steppe, but if the Xaela are based on the Mongol hordes of history they're renowned for their deadly cavalry and archery, something rather apparent if you read certain clan descriptions. The problem is so little information was given on Xaela society (compared to the Raen, who are basically part of a feudal Japanese society) so we can only infer their sociology is similar to the Mongolians of a similar time period.

Ultimately, they didn't have the time and resources to devote to making unique models for the two tribes or didn't want to. No matter how you try to reason how or why they could or would have, it's ultimately pointless because it didn't happen. Would more people have been satisfied? Probably, but there are just as many reasons to not make different models for the two tribes as there are reasons to do so.

Also, since the Raen are pseudo-Japanese, it would only make sense they act like prim and proper period Japanese women (albeit with an edge). Unfortunately because they didn't bother with unique Xaela models (or even emotes) this means they're stuck with the same body language, but it is what it is.

It's not impossible to believe there's a way for Auri women to be taller than they are, but nothing in-game says or even suggests that. We're limited by the character creator - which creates only what falls within the range of an "average" member of that race - so even if there was a clan of super-secretive Xaela with super tall women, that's not exactly average, so you still couldn't do it. Either way, there is still the sexual dimorphism present in the Au Ra that makes the men far taller and more muscular than the women, and no matter how much you want it to be untrue it still is. That's just what they are. What makes your hypothetical "super-secret special tribe of Xaela whose women are as tall as the men" fall under "Special Snowflake" territory is that it breaks canon for your personal desires. That's what bad fanfiction writers do.

Auri women are not as tall or as muscular as Auri men. Deal with it.

... even so, that doesn't mean the next playable race (if there is one) will have similar sexual dimorphism or builds.

Roegadyn might have some sexual dimorphism, but it's nowhere near as noticeable as the Au Ra. Being a bit shorter (comparatively speaking) and less muscular than the men still leaves female Roegadyn taller and more muscular than the females of any other playable race. You aren't going to get "Hulk-esque" women in a video game - it's just not going to happen. Considering the Roegadyn were almost carbon copied (physically) from the Galka of XI (who had no females) and female Roegadyn weren't playable in 1.x, it's a major improvement. Roegadyn women still have that "Amazonian beauty" thing going on, which is honestly about the furthest any game developer will go towards making a powerful-looking female character (and, short of things like steroids, about what you'd expect to see from a real-life strong woman).

Why would SE put in a race of tall, strong women and dainty, petite men? Well, they (probably) wouldn't, but if they did it would be to make a minority audience happy. They might put in a less sexually dimorphic race in the future, but there will (probably) never be a race like that. Double standard, it sucks, but it is what it is. Besides, you can't complain you hate the Au Ra for their sexual dimorphism and then want a race with that same sexual dimorphism, just inverted. It shows you're not thinking objectively, because the goal of any playable race should be to have sexual dimorphism not too dissimilar to your average male and female human.

I figure that because I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt and don't judge people as guilty without evidence. If they introduce another playable race and if they're cutesy women with tough men, or sexual dimorphism on the level of the Au Ra, I'm going to call shenanigans because it doesn't make sense (as much as Auri sexual dimorphism can be rationalized, it's still unrealistic for a humanoid race). Yes, even if they introduce a race of big, tough women and dainty, petite men. (You can't beg for what you want while condemning people who want the opposite.) There's no way to directly influence what they're going to put into the game, just like there's no way to directly influence the direction of the story.

Might put up a DRK story topic, because I really want to discuss it. I felt like it was very good, much more psychological and introspective than most.

[Torada]

OK, so in the flavor text for the Wind Up Odin, it says the following(already quoted earlier in this thread, can't find it) - "Many have pondered why a dark divinity with roots in northern mythology would wield a blade with a decidedly Far Eastern name. A popular theory is that Odin acquired the blade upon slaying an Auri warrior who was the first ever to notch his theretofore unsullied plate. "

Is there any lore backing up this theory? I have a lore heavy company member and we are discussing this tidbit.

[Cilia]

OK, so in the flavor text for the Wind Up Odin, it says the following(already quoted earlier in this thread, can't find it) - "Many have pondered why a dark divinity with roots in northern mythology would wield a blade with a decidedly Far Eastern name. A popular theory is that Odin acquired the blade upon slaying an Auri warrior who was the first ever to notch his theretofore unsullied plate. "

Is there any lore backing up this theory? I have a lore heavy company member and we are discussing this tidbit.

That bit is the only thing discussing the topic. So, no.