Lupin - make it a playable race!

[MOZZYSTAR]

They're already approaching that point with the Au Ra though, at least with the males.
There are quite a few FF-Games with no racial variety whatsoever; most FF games have a mostly - if not entirely - human cast. Earlier FFs had the occational dwarfs and elfs, but later games usually had the odd non-human cast member at most, even if there were multiple races. The only exceptions are usually spinoffs.
I guess I'm trying to say that I don't understand the disappointment, super-crazy-creative races have hardly been a staple if looking at the whole franchise. (Though I admit then when there where different races, they were usually notable.)

Overall, I appreciate your opinion & points.

To point out: I never once commented on Au Ra, and lore wise I find them to be very interesting (especially with the fact that their culture has actually been a vital point in the MSQ). Design-wise, I do prefer their original concepts over the ones SE but for other reasons other than "slapping scales on a hume" (I am so sick of tiny, teenaged or younger looking girls as much as I love the Au Ra girls), though I do think they could have pushed the Au Ra a little more, like in their original concept designs. However, I'm not really talking about Au Ra, I'm talking about our other races which may or may not serve as the base for new races. Elezen, Roe, Lala, Hyur, et cetera. They're all very "hume." And while - yes - there are a lot of very "hume" races throughout the FF franchise (Dwarves, Cetra, Al Bhed, et cetera), there are still lot of "fantastical" ones scattered across multiple titles. Many titles title (not every title, let me emphasise) of FF does have more "fantastical" races like Yukes & Lilty (CC), Mermaids (FF1), Werewolves (FF5), Shumi+others (FF8), Qu+others (FF9), Ronso+others (FF10), Nu Mou+everything (TT, FF12), et cetera. They don't need to be super-creative-and-totally-original-to-FFXIV, but it would be nice if they they were a little more than just different phenotypes of humans (like Elezen, Roe, Lala, and Hyur). For example, I think it would have been better if Lalas had been lilties design-wise (but even then, maybe lilties would've been considered as beasts, along with Yukes and mermaids and Shumi and Qu and Ronso and so on). While I understand it's part of the lore for FFXIV, I find it a bit disappointing because what appealed to me in other FF games were the more fantastical elements. I still like it for the story and the new areas are gorgeous, but it's lacking something the other titles have.

Edit: it probably shows, but my favourites were 8, 9, 10, 12, different CC's, so with those being my favourites I think that's where the disappointment comes in.

The only thing that we see different from Lupins and the other races are their heads....

The face is the first thing people see. If you're on a wagon and Amal'jaa or Sahagin or whatever show up to blast the wagon away, do you think people in Eorzea are going to respond well to a wolf face? Like... how can you possibly rationalise a fanged animal face on a miqo'te's body when a fanged animal face on a roe-like body is terrifying? (Edit: let me emphasise: we didn't start in Doma. We started in Eorzea during a time where beast clans/beast-like figures were truly terrifying even if they were innocuous.)

[Viera] have the only avantage of being an already existing race in the FF franchise.

Werewolves exist in FF5