The tawdry female bosses are tiresome, and we could do with more male fanservice.

[Iscah]

You are relying so heavily on the "Real life" aspect, which is my contention. You have no idea what the 'structures' are or their purpose. Thats part of the fun of fantasy and scifi, sometimes you can just make stuff up. It doesnt have to make sense to our real world environment. Now you can be like "Well I prefer differetn designs and concepts,' but that isnt how the approach is coming across. It is "real life is like this, therefore this fictional species needs to be like this."

The thing is, bringing logical elements of "real life" into your fantasy concepts strengthen them. You don't just drop reality at the door - this is still a world that looks broadly like Earth and follows the same physical rules.

Yes, you can just make stuff up, but that made-up stuff is more convincing if it's logical and all the pieces seem to fit together in a similar way to what we'd expect to see in a real-world analogue.

The Sahagin have many fish-like traits and reproduction is clearly one of them; thus it seems incongruous for the female to have breasts - much more than it seems for Garuda who is a one-off melding of "human woman shape" and "bird features".

This isn't just an issue I have with this because it's about "female representation" or anything like that; I was having much the same argument in another fandom recently over the fact that one gender of a mammalian race has tails and the other doesn't. That jars with me, and no amount of "it's fantasy/sci-fi so they can be anything!" makes it seem convincing.

Or back in FFXIV, it's always irked me that Xaela males have the dark eyes but females don't. It seems like something that should have been a clan difference, or possibly a gender difference (though I'm glad it isn't), but not somehow isolated to one gender of one clan. And yes, that detail bugs me more than the fact that a humanoid race has giant horns in the place of ears.

[Lauront]

Fair question. To answer you Byakko and Seiryu would be my type.

Byakko's weird arm kills the mood and his neuteredness just makes my eyes roll and not with pleasure. And it's a shame because Byakko is handsome.
Seiryu is if I could refer to Theodric's comment, androgynous to a point that it favors femininity over masculinity and therefore I find little attractive were I to be seeking masculine traits.

I would be much more impressed by a boss which errs to the side of FFXV's translation of Ifrit. Now that is hmm.

edit : personally I would never consider Zurvan sexually appealing in his character design. The analytical part of me sees him only as an appeal to his nature rather than an appeal out of gender.

I agree, though I think some of it comes down to personal taste. Seiryu is too androgynous for my own tastes, too, and the rest all have something weird about them - a bit of a High Seraph situation, really. Zurvan falls into the same category as Byakko for me - attractive from the torso upwards, but he has monstrous features which are just too much. Something like what Theodric mentioned would be welcome.

[SturmChurro]

I don't know, if I was going to actually weigh in on this conversation (not joke). I like a lot of the male monstrous designs, things like zurvan are cool, and we have like the 'Ultima, The High Seraph' in comparison. I never thought there was too big of an issue with what we got in terms of male boss designs overall.

[Lauront]

I don't know, if I was going to actually weigh in on this conversation (not joke). I like a lot of the male monstrous designs, things like zurvan are cool, and we have like the 'Ultima, The High Seraph' in comparison. I never thought there was too big of an issue with what we got in terms of male boss designs overall.

IMO there's a lot of selective ignoring of females which are monstrous, but nonetheless still attractive in some guise, in order to push the beauty and beast narrative. I mean look at Echidna - yes, some appealing characteristics, but there's no arguing she's not a monster. Some people want to play a numbers game, but eh, there's enough of both to go around IMO, and like others have said, it's their game in the end and there's no need for quotas for this kind of thing. Certainly though, I think Theodric has a point about what they could bring in to introduce more male eye candy.

[sarehptar]

Some people want to play a numbers game, but eh, there's enough of both to go around IMO, and like others have said, it's their game in the end and there's no need for quotas for this kind of thing. Certainly though, I think Theodric has a point about what they could bring in to introduce more male eye candy.

I feel like this thread wouldn't be 31 pages long if there were really enough of both to go around.

Goddammit Square Enix, how dare you deny us the mid-fight cutscene of liquid-coated topless Regula van Hydrus popping out of Sapphire Weapon???

[SturmChurro]

IMO there's a lot of selective ignoring of females which are monstrous, but nonetheless still attractive in some guise, in order to push the beauty and beast narrative. I mean look at Echidna - yes, some appealing characteristics, but there's no arguing she's not a monster. Some people want to play a numbers game, but eh, there's enough of both to go around IMO, and like others have said, it's their game in the end and there's no need for quotas for this kind of thing. Certainly though, I think Theodric has a point about what they could bring in to introduce more male eye candy.

Like earlier in this thread someone stated a lot of the boss designs are a homage to how they appeared in previous games. I'm sure there are plenty of male characters in previous games (not that I have played any) that could recieve the same treatment. Anyway yeah, I never thought about this topic once in the entirety of my time playing FFXIV, that we should have some sort of "sexy" balance or whatever. I definitely don't think SE's vision should be hampered by trying to create some balance between the sexes when it comes to boss design, rather they should continue to do what they feel fits their vision of whatever boss of the time; continue to do what they are doing. A lot of boss appearances have a lot to do with whatever particular boss's actual background lore, or story, whatever those aspects are, often presented in their appearance.

[Theodric]

Goddammit Square Enix, how dare you deny us the mid-fight cutscene of liquid-coated topless Regula van Hydrus popping out of Sapphire Weapon???

We might still get that, depending on how in-depth the solo duty happens to be.

[Enla]

Like earlier in this thread someone stated a lot of the boss designs are a homage to how they appeared in previous games. I'm sure there are plenty of male characters in previous games (not that I have played any) that could recieve the same treatment. Anyway yeah, I never thought about this topic once in the entirety of my time playing FFXIV, that we should have some sort of "sexy" balance or whatever. I definitely don't think SE's vision should be hampered by trying to create some balance between the sexes when it comes to boss design, rather they should continue to do what they feel fits their vision of whatever boss of the time; continue to do what they are doing. A lot of boss appearances have a lot to do with whatever particular boss's actual background lore, or story, whatever those aspects are, often presented in their appearance.

There really kinda aren't is the thing. There's plenty of male bosses yes, but very few of them fit the 'tawdry' label. Male bosses like Kuja or Seymour are very much in the minority.

And Seymour is less tawdry and more 'beer gut'.

That said I wouldn't mind it if they glam'd some old bosses up or made new ones in the spirit of Kuja at all. Equal opportunity beef cake and all.

[SturmChurro]

There really kinda aren't is the thing. There's plenty of male bosses yes, but very few of them fit the 'tawdry' label. Male bosses like Kuja or Seymour are very much in the minority.

And Seymour is less tawdry and more 'beer gut'.

That said I wouldn't mind it if they glam'd some old bosses up or made new ones in the spirit of Kuja at all. Equal opportunity beef cake and all.

Yeah, all I was really trying to say is I don't think SE should be hampered by trying to do some checklist like, "okay we added one skimpy female, next male boss has gotta have some rockin' abs and a loincloth or something". If they design a new boss and they naturally come to the conclusion that that's what they want him to look like, great. Similarly, if they want him to look like Zurvan or something, great. I just want some cool, or quality designs in general.

I'm actually pretty surprised that FF doesn't have too many male bosses, or enemies that fit the design aesthetic requested in this thread. Would have thought there would be a decent amount.

[linayar]

There's plenty of male bosses yes, but very few of them fit the 'tawdry' label. Male bosses like Kuja or Seymour are very much in the minority.

Maybe, but it's probably not supposed to be a competition or a number's game. And with patch 5.3, there's the upcoming boss I mentioned earlier in the thread:

So, I don't know if anyone has paid attention to this; I believe it's from the same dungeon as the female boss that may have caused the creation of this thread: