Lalafell as a percentage of NA population

[nebby00]

People always seem to mention that they look like children so they are seen as kind of a childish race by many.. also small auto = puntable..
I don’t know why people find cute things cringe or lame and annoying.. maybe it is the way most people in this region are raised.

I like lalafell because they are small, cute yes like chibi characters from manga, and kind of look like dolls. I think se could put some cute sweet candy lolita style outfits with lalas in mind to enhance ultimate dolly mode.. .

I often don’t much fit in mindset wise though.. so I don’t actually understand the problem I simply can only observe and interpret.

That would be a bad idea in introducing lolita outfits. People can be straight up degenerate in this game, and you can get some really creepy people that will send sexual tells in game. People have already put examples of such earlier in the thread of their negative experiences and I've seen where certain outfits made be to cute for a certain race turn into a dumpster fire. This being Elin from Tera who look like children with animal ears and tails. The community turned into a cesspool the more outfits were added to Elin and it got on the borderline of pedophile behavior.

Cute things aren't inherently bad, but people can just as quickly ruin those cute things. It's why in the West, most people find lalafell strange and cringey. I personally don't care; mostly feel that lalafell are okay until the line is crossed by involving them in any sort of ERP; then that is where it becomes disturbing.

[Duskane]

and i thought wow gnomes were bad

they are especially their mecha counter part

[Lanadra]

A lot of factors I would imagine..

Culturally, in the west the fascination with 'chibi', small and cute characters is a lot less. It appeals to us a lot less and such races, be it in FFXIV or other games are usually seen as memey, joke characters and at worst, off putting design wise. I think others have said it also in the thread, the Japanese love cute and small things, whereas people in the west much more love sexy ladies or big badass dudes. You see it complained about here on the forum aplenty, how even a lot of the males of all the playable races look 'too soft, too feminine'.

Stigma could be another reason, in the west.. when you look at a race like the Lalafells here.. or equivalent races in other games, think Elin in TERA.. people think 'little girl/boy/kid' and you can be looked at the wrong way by others for it, less so with Lalafells since FFXIV doesn't really sexualize characters much.

And representation could be another reason, as in, making characters that realistically represent the player.. plenty of gamers will always default to 'how can I make myself in this game?'. They're usually the people who will often go human male/female and try to avoid the more exotic races because to them it can just make it harder to make something that can accurately represent themselves.

[MirielleLavandre]

Thanks for all the great input! I guess I've never thought of them as toddlers, but more like the chars from anime like Puella Magi Madoka or so. It is true that we like really cutesy things, even a number of JPN guys do, too! Of course this would probably be seen as really effeminate in the West, but then again even Yoshida-san plays a tiny Lala BLM // thanks again and I'm happy to see such diverse replies!

[GeminiReed]

Viera’s are uncommon due to the lack of customisation options but even if that wasn’t an issue, I think people wouldnt play as them because they’re tall…

The limited customization options are a big problem and one that makes the raw metrics look bad. Even worse, design teams fail to do a proper root cause analysis and rely on the raw metrics to influence their decisions. (Look how popular MSQ roulette is! We need more 8-man instances with unskippable cutscenes! Weird that nobody runs Coils... I know! It needs nerfs!)

Tall races suffer other issues. All too often their designs have exaggerated proportions and the animations trend towards caricature. Roe, Elezen, and Male Aura all suffer from this. MMO designers have learned that travel speeds (walk, run, etc.) must be normalized for gameplay reasons. The side effect of this is that it makes smaller characters feel faster while the larger ones just lumber along. Often the exaggerated animations make this perception even worse.

When they designed Viera they avoided most of those pitfalls. Despite their height they adhere to normal human proportions and don't feel as ungainly as femroe or as stiff as femelezen. When I run on mine it doesn't feel noticeably slower than when I'm on an Aura alt unless I'm looking for it. It is very in my face when I play my femroe alt.

[SugarPuff]

I like playing a lalafell, but what I've heard most often from friends is that they'd feel silly and I think that comes down to a combination of most points that have already been mentioned. A love of small, cute and doll-like things just isn't celebrated here (it's mainly associated with children and women over fifty) but love of most things perceived as sleek, imposing, and powerful is vaunted. No one generally questions why you want to play a sexy or intimidating looking character, but many don't understand why anyone would play one that appears weak and (you might assume) ineffective. Also, I think in the US there's a tendency to glamorize the "what you see is what you get" axiom and lalafell don't fit that.

[ItMe]

Is that why child and sexual abuse crime rates are vastly higher in the west than in Japan?

When you say "the west" are you comparing Japan (population 125.9 million) with...
Western Europe? (pop. 196.9 mil)
With the USA? (pop. 333.4 mil)

If so, of course places with a greater population will have more crimes to report. There are more people to commit crimes.

[Gyson]

When you say "the west" are you comparing Japan (population 125.9 million) with...
Western Europe? (pop. 196.9 mil)
With the USA? (pop. 333.4 mil)

If so, of course places with a greater population will have more crimes to report. There are more people to commit crimes.

Number of reported sexual assault incidents per 100,000 citizens:

United States: 27.30
Germany: 9.40
Japan: 1.00

[LittleImp]

Is that why child and sexual abuse crime rates are vastly higher in the west than in Japan?

Thinking having more underaged/underaged looking characters depicted in fiction makes a country "less moral" is a really medieval way of thinking. An intelligent adult can discern fiction from reality.

Japan is actually notorious for underreporting or misreporting these types of crimes, and is rated as a tier 2 country when it comes to their handling of sex trafficking, largely because of their specific failure to properly address crimes against children.

Here's an excerpt from the official justification of their tier 2 rating:
"Law enforcement bodies continued to identify hundreds of children exploited in the commercial sex industry without formally designating them as victims of trafficking in most cases, hindering their access to protection services and judicial recourse."

[KitKatnip]

One reason I can think of is if you want sexy glam you can't do it with a Lala because people would think you were a child predator.

Also they are kinda creepy in a Chucky doll sort of way. Except for the Sultana. And maybe Krile.