Child-like characters?

[Melichoir]

Tbh by consequences I mean more potentional blacklash than creeps. Creeps are pretty much everywhere, so it's impossible to avoid them completely - you can have the game full of bulky monsters and it still will have its creepy part of community.

But in regards to people just in general, those who don't even play the game but will see a short cute race combined with humanity's love to jump on disgusting conclusions can start their crusade against the company just because they can. I mean... Some people in other game (Granblue Fantasy if it matters) assumed I'm a creep few days ago just because I like cute characters, and some of them are minors. People are... well, they are people.

I am agree that we should either have bigger height slider or one more short race, but I also can see potential problems behind this, sadly. At this point I'm glad I was able to set my irl height on my character at all, which is 160cm. It would be good if it was possible to make shorter than average male character not only for Lalafells and Miqo'te, and partly Midlanders. I could go with female character of course, but I don't play female characters even though I am female myself, so welp... good for me that I like male Miqo'te, otherwise there is a chance I wouldn't have suitable race in the game at all.

I dont think the issue is so much the height as much as it is the form. If we wanna make some comparisons, Goblins and Gnomes from WoW dont receive the criticisms that lalafells in FFXIV (Or harvin from GB) do simply due to design choices. It is very clear that they're 'shrunken' adults vs something that could swing both ways in the eyes of the public. If anything, I think that lalafells get an even worse end of the stick compared to Harvin due to subtle design differences between the two. But I digress.

Point is it's not about the height, its about the build. If they redesigned lalafells to have more 'adult' figures at their current stature and some of the criticism will disappear. Of course, expect some responses to be "Well now youre trying to sexualize children for sure!" simply because it doesnt matter how theyre designed, some will argue theyre 'children' no matter how they look.

*comparison picture*

I blame anime culture for it and i am honestly sick of it, i like Anime but i hate certain cliches like this with passion.

Different styles depict age differently. But in this case, it really was a situtaion of "Oh, lets draw a lady with the body of an 18-21 YO and call them 14". It's a wierd lore choice that really doesn't make to much sense because it offers nothing story or lore wise other than "Check it, this girl is 14!" Unless that was a running joke, but its been a while since Ive watched Gurenn Lagenn

[Halivel]

I dont think the issue is so much the height as much as it is the form. If we wanna make some comparisons, Goblins and Gnomes from WoW dont receive the criticisms that lalafells in FFXIV (Or harvin from GB) do simply due to design choices. It is very clear that they're 'shrunken' adults vs something that could swing both ways in the eyes of the public. If anything, I think that lalafells get an even worse end of the stick compared to Harvin due to subtle design differences between the two. But I digress.

Point is it's not about the height, its about the build. If they redesigned lalafells to have more 'adult' figures at their current stature and some of the criticism will disappear. Of course, expect some responses to be "Well now youre trying to sexualize children for sure!" simply because it doesnt matter how theyre designed, some will argue theyre 'children' no matter how they look.

Agree with this statement pretty much, with maybe only addition that it also depends on community itself. In case with Auri and also Miqo'te, who have pretty obvious features of adult women, there are still people who says that they look like teens. So as you said - redesign Lalafells and there will be comments about children again. So well, in conslusion I quess we can say that everything matters - build, height, and how broken community mindset is, with last factor being probably the biggest one.

[Melichoir]

Agree with this statement pretty much, with maybe only addition that it also depends on community itself. In case with Auri and also Miqo'te, who have pretty obvious features of adult women, there are still people who says that they look like teens. So as you said - redesign Lalafells and there will be comments about children again. So well, in conslusion I quess we can say that everything matters - build, height, and how broken community mindset is, with last factor being probably the biggest one.

Yeah, theres a lot of factors that go into it. I think if they looked closer to harvin than lalafells, youd have less commentary, and closer to gnomes from WoW than harvin, youd get even less. But youll still get it no matter what because there are gonna be 'nay-sayers' no matter how you cut it. At some point you gotta say "Well this is good enough". But this is all academic in the end, as FFXIV wont change lalafells unless there is some legal issue that arrises where a government in one of their markets says "Hey, change these characters or we blacklist your game." But dunno if that would happen or if itd be good.

I think the only irony ends up being is the "Oh my god Children analogues" in one thread and in other threads its "Its just a game bro" when someone does the push up emote on another person. While Im not suggesting anything should go, I think that the 'line' tends to shift incoherently at times.

[Lium]

Honest question. Why is this even a request? Why would you want to play as a child?

[Halivel]

Honest question. Why is this even a request? Why would you want to play as a child?

I'm not in the squad who wants to play as a child personally, but for the same reason people want to play specific races or genders: just because they want. Maybe that's how their character's lore is.

There are also most likely teenagers (the game is 12+ after all, even though in my country it's actually 18+ but meh) who would like to be able to create a character more appropriate to their own age, though I doubt they sit at this Forum. At least when I was 13, and that's when I started to play MMO games, I tried to make young looking characters because that was appropriate for me then.

Also, and it's not really an argument, but I quess it can affect the demand somwhere in its core, FF14 is a Japanese game and not the small part of its playerbase is into Japanese animation industry, where main characters are often middle or high school students so it just doesn't look like something unnatural to have such an option.

But these are just thoughts of why some people would want to play as younger character, I can't say for sure what different people think.

[Enla]

I see a catgirl here, pretty sure cats age faster than human it should be the same for a catgirl.

That's from Clannad judging by the 'WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOUR EYES' facial proportions. So not a catgirl, plus you can see the headband the cat ears are attached to. Anime just likes trotting out the 'mother who looks like a teen' trope.

[SugarPuff]

Honest question. Why is this even a request? Why would you want to play as a child?

The first time I encountered Padjal I wanted to play as one. I still would if it were an option but there's no reason, any more than there's a reason why I choose Elezen, Lalafell, and Miquote over the other races.

My husband was surprised when I mentioned it (about the Padjal) and said something about how they're kids but I was surprised in turn because I don't understand why that makes any difference. For the sake of clarity I do get some of the arguments people pose against playable children of the existing races (and don't believe it's a worthwhile endeavor) but that's another subject altogether.

When I started writing this I had it in my mind that I'd provide some sort of enlightenment. The more I think back on that conversation with my husband the more I'm reminded the one thing I took away from it is that you're either bothered by the idea or baffled as to why anyone sees it as strange.

Well, so much for my plan of adding anything substantial....at any rate, I like small, cute characters regardless whatever lore they come up with to explain their existence. I'm mostly indifferent to that, as it pertains to player characters anyway.

[Lium]

The first time I encountered Padjal I wanted to play as one. I still would if it were an option but there's no reason, any more than there's a reason why I choose Elezen, Lalafell, and Miquote over the other races.

My husband was surprised when I mentioned it (about the Padjal) and said something about how they're kids but I was surprised in turn because I don't understand why that makes any difference. For the sake of clarity I do get some of the arguments people pose against playable children of the existing races (and don't believe it's a worthwhile endeavor) but that's another subject altogether.

When I started writing this I had it in my mind that I'd provide some sort of enlightenment. The more I think back on that conversation with my husband the more I'm reminded the one thing I took away from it is that you're either bothered by the idea or baffled as to why anyone sees it as strange.

Well, so much for my plan of adding anything substantial....at any rate, I like small, cute characters regardless whatever lore they come up with to explain their existence. I'm mostly indifferent to that, as it pertains to player characters anyway.

I understand where you are coming from, but I guess the reason why it bothers me is because I know how the internet is. Take one walk through Limsa Lominsa and look at all the ERP going down (at least in NA, not sure how it is in EU or JP).

Playing as a child is different than playing as a different race or gender because I feel like they will be used in sexual situations and often dressed provocatively. And the RP will just be really weird.

I have no doubt that this will be a very small minority as most people that want to play as children probably just want to for aesthetic reasons and nothing more. But all it takes is one or two doing something tawdry, someone posts it on social media, and just like that SE has a PR nightmare on their hands.

I will say that in all my years playing MMOs I have never seen this request until I started playing FFXIV. So, admittedly, this is very weird to me.

[Vidu]

Well it depends on what people mean by child.
Iirc Padjal in game have special feature like horn and have quite high responsability (I believe the one we met where entrusted with responsabilities not meant for children) so I do not see them as child/teenagers but kinda like lalafell.
But if by child they mean Khloe, then yes the question has every reason to be asked imo.

Padjal stop aging at a certain point in their life (usually pre-teen, though Kan-E apparently made it into her early 20s, going by her look) - they can be several hundred years old, though. I vaguely recall the conjurers-guildmast being over 300.

...but the point would still be that they look like children, despite their being an explantion why they're not. And while that explantion is intresting and fair enough for an NPC and the whole lore, it would make for a poor one to allow players to play characters that look like children - kinda the thing a lot of animes an other asian MMOs do. Just claiming that a character who very obviously looks like a child isnt one because they're actually an immortal being of some sort (vampire, demon, angle, padjal... whatever) doesnt make them look any less of a child and therefor a questionable choice for a playable race, at least in my opinion.

While I can understand the fascination SugarPuff would have with the whole padjal-concept, the whole problem what people might do to/with their child-looking characters still exist. Even if they'd claim "Oh no, thats not a child! They just look like one!" (Its bad enough that we have that for lalafell already... but in that case it actually seems more like they re-used the adult-models to show lalafell-children, not the other way around, aka: They claimed that adults are a lot younger with lalafell, not that an obvious child is a lot older than he or she looks).

[Vidu]

Being a child a looking like a child is very different.
Yoshida do not want us to play children but he plays a lalafell because they aren't.

In regards to lalafell I expressed myself not quite right, I apologise - as has been discussed in this thread before, lalafell dont actually look like (human) children.
What I meant to say was that the "problem" here is that they're using the same model for lalafell adults and lalafell children, given people who'd like to be able to play like a character thats using an obvious child-model (like Khloe, the hyur, elezen and au ra kids - and yes, the Padjal, too) the option to claim "They did it with lalafell!" or "We can already play lalafell, who look like children! Even the lalafell children look like the PCs we can create!"

And I do believe that in this context the difference between playing a character whos actually 13 years old and looks the part and playing a character whos 130 years old but still looks like 13 isnt that big - in terms of writing a character it might be intresting to have a child whos wise like and old man etc. - but given a child-looking character into the hands of a player still carries all the negative... possibilities and ethical concerns, even if you claim "Oh no, members of this race are actually all well over 100 years old!"
SE could still end up with someones twitter being filled with screenshots from their game, showing a character who very, very much looks like a pre-teen in questionable poses, outfits and situations. And I doubt the response "Oh, thats not a problem! That character is by lore 150!" would help much.