The cat's (or femhroth in this case) outta the bag

[reivaxe]

Yes, the diversity was for the games health and that their popularity/lack of wasn’t a make or break deal for the animal heads. If they had wanted to just make money and call it a day it would have been far, far easier/profitable to have simply rolled out the m/f viera together lol

I don't see why to go all out for one gender and water down their counterpart. Could you not use your justification of luring over the wow players that use female avatars with a beastgirl instead of taller miqote?

You're missing what I'm trying to say, it seems.
They didn't add "Diversity!" for diversity's sake, they added them for "game health" and my assessment is that that's another way of saying "a calculated attempt to draw in people who play MMOs overseas". That IS an attempt to make more money ... because if you can convince, say, 18K WoW players to come play FF14 because Hrothgar reminds them of w/e in WoW, then that's 20K new players who are paying monthly. That's growth and more money.

If we're looking at WoW then cool. I don't want to stereotype WoW as I don't play it, but it's a game with a lot of "ugly/ hard/ goofy/ non-human" races. It's also a Male dominated game, as like 60% of all player characters are dudes last I checked. It's not shocking at all that many WoW converts go to Highlander Males and Hrothgar (They are almost at the same population level last I saw, impressive given how boned Hrothgar CC options are).
But females? Female of those types of races are not as popular as males. Google searched and found these numbers...

The List - Every race along with the percentage of that race that are female (sorted highest to lowest)

Nightborne - 73.9%

Void Elf - 70.7%

Lightforged Draenei - 67.9%

Draenei - 64.9%

Blood Elf - 58.1%

Night Elf - 57.3%

Pandaren (A) - 45.3%

Pandaren (H) - 44.9%

Gnome - 44.9%

Human - 44.2%

Goblin - 36.1%

Troll - 35.3%

Worgen - 29.1%

Mag'har Orc - 27.8%

Dark Iron Dwarf - 25.4%

Undead - 25.3%

Orc - 20.8%

Highmountain Tauren - 19.7%

Tauren - 16.1%

Dwarf - 15%

Can also look at GW2 at a time when it was doing well and see that Male Charr were close to being the 2nd most popular males in the game, yet the females were dead last.

One thing that seems universally true regardless of East or West is that players prefer females to look "cute/ attractive/ beautiful".

So for your last point ... would SE think that there's a market of people who want beast faced females worth going for or appealing to? Everything shows that people are more willing to play "weird looking" dudes far more than they're willing to play "weird looking" females, after all.
That's a question for SE to answer, but it's been clear what type of females people enjoy regardless of game. And again, I am furry and hate looking at these games because all their furry races lean more into "Monster people" than attractive furries ... but I can't find anything that would suggest that an attractive Furry Female would do any better than anything, as no one makes em.

So yeah, long-winded way of saying "people are far more likely to play the dudes than the females" when it comes to non-human faces.

[lalin]

aura concept art was this

and we got this

concept art has nothing to do with the actual races we get ingame , this happened with almost all the races we got ...

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

You're missing what I'm trying to say, it seems.
They didn't add "Diversity!" for diversity's sake, they added them for "game health" and my assessment is that that's another way of saying "a calculated attempt to draw in people who play MMOs overseas".

They added Diversity, to add more Playable Options.
Creating a Beast Race does just that. Plain and Simple.

Why would they need to attempt to draw in people who play MMOs overseas, when they already have a Diverse Market? According to some people, NA is the largest playerbase, and if you claim the Hrothgar were an attempt to draw in these people..why are they already the largest base? And this happened, WAY before Hrothgar were introduced.
This certainly wasn't a powermove to get in WoW players, because most WoW players dont play Hrothgar (the ones I know at least).

And word of mouth is what got these people to play the game as they fled from WoW. Not a Beast Race

[Rokke]

You're missing what I'm trying to say, it seems.
They didn't add "Diversity!" for diversity's sake, they added them for "game health" and my assessment is that that's another way of saying "a calculated attempt to draw in people who play MMOs overseas". That IS an attempt to make more money ... because if you can convince, say, 18K WoW players to come play FF14 because Hrothgar reminds them of w/e in WoW, then that's 20K new players who are paying monthly. That's growth and more money.

But the numbers for WoW show that your stats are about the same for male characters: humanoid shaped races still outnumber the non humans by significant margins. So no, a beefy dude with a lion head wouldn't be the best lure from XIV's biggest competitor... a beefy human with fangs or long ears, maybe, but not a full blown furry.

In fact, thinking of the big wow streamers that took XIV out for a testdrive, I don't think any picked Hroths. Asmond was a highlander and several others went lala.

[reivaxe]

aura concept art was this

and we got this

concept art has nothing to do with the actual races we get ingame , this happened with almost all the races we got ...

This is also Au Ra concept art.


The art in the OP is not them trying to "figure out" what they want female Hrothgar to look like, it is finalized art of the Bozja Queen.
It's more ap to compare it to art of other trail bosses like this.

But the numbers for WoW show that your stats are about the same for male characters: humanoid shaped races still outnumber the non humans by significant margins. So no, a beefy dude with a lion head wouldn't be the best lure from XIV's biggest competitor... a beefy human with fangs or long ears, maybe, but not a full blown furry.

In fact, thinking of the big wow streamers that took XIV out for a testdrive, I don't think any picked Hroths. Asmond was a highlander and several others went lala.

You have me mistaken, I NEVER said non-humans were "Popular" in WoW (I also focused more on "the West" in all my post than WoW only, as it's not the only MMO out there. Like I pointed out with GW2, Charr males are actually fairly popular among people who play dudes in GW2).
Also, WoW and Western players have been coming over well before the streamer floods. Given that in SHB the only male option to drop in numbers was Roebro (at 8% drop iirc) and Hrothgar are more popular than they have ever been, I'm inclined to think that a fair number of them are new to the game and came from somewhere. WoW? GW2? ESO? All the above? IDK, but their numbers are mostly from Western DCs, and they do in fact fill the slot with "Big beast dude" to catch people who like that.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

This is also Au Ra concept art.

Your Conveniently ignoring the point, that the art we see could be one thing, but the Final Render can be another different thing.
Example, the art they posted, and now the final render we have are completely different from many of the other concepts.
Yes, at the end of the day they chose and finalized the style you posted, but it still proves things can change

[reivaxe]

Your Conveniently ignoring the point, that the art we see could be one thing, but the Final Render can be another different thing.
Example, the art they posted, and now the final render we have are completely different from many of the other concepts.
Yes, at the end of the day they chose and finalized the style you posted, but it still proves things can change

No, I didn't ignore anything. You all are looking at concept art without context.
MAKING a race requires a ton of "throw *&^% at a wall and see what sticks". That's why early concept art doesn't match the end product. They even knew what Female Viera looked like in past games and still played around with making them more beast like in HW concept art.

This isn't that. The ONLY trail boss art that they put in these books is finalized art. Like, I have one with me right now. They don't show you the creation process for trail bosses, they flat out show you the 1 or 2 finalized pictures that look the way they intended the boss to look.

[lalin]

No, I didn't ignore anything. You all are looking at concept art without context.
MAKING a race requires a ton of "throw *&^% at a wall and see what sticks". That's why early concept art doesn't match the end product. They even knew what Female Viera looked like in past games and still played around with making them more beast like in HW concept art.

This isn't that. The ONLY trail boss art that they put in these books is finalized art. Like, I have one with me right now. They don't show you the creation process for trail bosses, they flat out show you the 1 or 2 finalized pictures that look the way they intended the boss to look.

actually the one i posted are in
FINAL FANTASY XIV: HEAVENSWARD - The Art of Ishgard - Stone and Steel - Artbook
----------
here you go

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

No, I didn't ignore anything. You all are looking at concept art without context.
MAKING a race requires a ton of "throw *&^% at a wall and see what sticks". That's why early concept art doesn't match the end product. They even knew what Female Viera looked like in past games and still played around with making them more beast like in HW concept art.

This isn't that. The ONLY trail boss art that they put in these books is finalized art. Like, I have one with me right now. They don't show you the creation process for trail bosses, they flat out show you the 1 or 2 finalized pictures that look the way they intended the boss to look.

Thats not true in the slightest.....the concept art was posted in promotion to HW. Or is that somehow not context?....
You realize you just agreed with the POINT, that concept art doesn't always match the end product. They look at different ideas and chose one in the end, which is Exactly what happened with the Au-Ra. Again...thats the POINT.
Those 2 pictures you just posted are Finalized images; Character Art. Not concept art that is subject to change. The main thing being that they have finalized 3D Rendered Models

And...outside of Fanart I dont think Viera were ever illustrated Beastly. Gonna need to see a picture. They've always had weird feet, but I dont recall a concept art that ever tried to Deviate from their designs from Tactics & XII.

[reivaxe]

actually the one i posted are in
FINAL FANTASY XIV: HEAVENSWARD - The Art of Ishgard - Stone and Steel - Artbook
----------
here you go

Yes, these are pictures of them trying to figure out what Au Ra females as a race would look like.

That is not a trail boss nor do they show the creative process of making a trail boss in these books.

They added Diversity, to add more Playable Options.
Creating a Beast Race does just that. Plain and Simple.

Why would they need to attempt to draw in people who play MMOs overseas, when they already have a Diverse Market? According to some people, NA is the largest playerbase, and if you claim the Hrothgar were an attempt to draw in these people..why are they already the largest base?

First off, like I said, everything that's not a copy adds "diversity". If you don't think that "game health" means more than "I did it outta the kindness of my heart" then that's just your opinion, plan and simple. It can be read differently.

2nd, how popular do you think MMORPGs are right now? MMORPGs are past its golden years as a genre (Hopefully it makes a come back) and there are only a few hugely popular ones, you're far more likely to convince someone who already likes MMOs to try your MMO than you are to convince a Fortnite kid to give it a go. Like, legit, just look at the state of things. The game exploded more so in recent popularity via WoW people leaving WoW and trying out FF14 ... because WoW and its devs have been driving them away. Growth in numbers comes from somewhere, and though not every new player is from another MMO, it's completely common sense to appeal to players who already like MMOs.