Female Hrothgar as a playable race. Show your support!

[reivaxe]

I don't see much wrong with the concept art for Bozja's queen. The face is clearly not very detailed but given that female Hrothgar are female, to start off with, one would imagine that they should have softer and more feminine features than male Hrothgar.

Given that these are player characters it would make sense to give them attractive bodies. It is possible to make a character that has a lioness-like face and a body that appeals to those of us who like having girl characters on our screen. The reality of the situation is as follows:

They will have 4 faces, one lioness, tigress, coeurl, and whatever the discount Kimahri option is supposed to be. They will have larger eyes and smoother jaws than the males.

They will have a restricted number of hairstyles and may release with missing ears because something went very wrong in the Hrothgar hair department.

If they have feminine "heroine" builds in the way of female Highlander or Viera's proportions, those who aren't furries may still gravitate towards them and those who want them to be big and bulky will probably still play them regardless.

If they have femroe proportions then it will turn off huge swathes of people, especially if combined with the limited customization options Hrothgar suffer from. I imagine some furries may be ok with this, but even then I imagine that if they want to play a *female* animal race that they would want something that looks better than femroe, who are difficult to make look good in much of the game's armor.

Male Hrothgar already has so many design mistakes that do not need to be repeated. We do not need female Hrothgar to have a hunchback, or to look as if their equipment is struggling to contain them, for lack of a better description. Such exaggerated features border on caricature and is part of what contributed to the Perfect World comparisons back when male Hrothgar were announced back in 2019.

Do you want to know how you sell a "lion man" to the FF/anime lovers crowd? All they had to do was this: give them the Highlander build, which is both masculine and easier to take seriously, have them stand upright and proud instead of hunched over, make more faces like face 1 and 2 with more expressive eyes/mouths, give eyebrows to each face, and let them choose whatever hair they want. Let's see if they learn from these mistakes, in either case they need to completely rethink how they go about Hrothgar before beginning the 3d model work on the females
.

Reading through this last few pages and just wanted to say "Well put".

People tend to let their ideas and personal desires run wild. The only thing that gives me hope about the ears is that 1- Hrothgals aint released yet and 2- They're being made at a time when the devs WANT the race to use shared hair. YP already knew people would bitch about the ears, he just didn't know the extent to which they would. Now? They would be foolish to repeat that f-up if they can help it.

I expect them to go for the Ronso gender swap fan art/ Bless cat race/ Furrier Mithra route seen in the concept art and mural. I don't think they will bother trying to do the same "type of cats" as they never ever bother making 1:1 female and male face for any other race. I think they will go for this fan art attractive female Ronso face and have 1 cuter/ 1 prettier/ 1 more evil looking small cat like face. Hrothgar trying to go full beast and be very different screwed them up, females never get the face diversity of males in this game and trying to make some stylized smaller cat faces may proove to be easier than making 3 big cat faces and a Ronso wanna be.

As for the bods, IMO they're either gonna have the Viera/ Au Ra looking bod of the Bozjan Queen or just be taller Thighlanders. Hoping that with 7.0 graphics bump they change up the body hair patches and opt for having full body fur patterns instead of this weak stuff with the males.

[MellowMink]

I don’t understand how there’s not only a decent amount of people who think that female Hrothgar shouldn’t be made since resources or some other double standard, but how they also think it’s fair that people who prefer playing as male characters should have more race options that those who prefer playing as female characters.

If you introduce male Viera, you should also have plans for female Hrothgar, or you’re being unbalanced; it’s really that simple. It is a good thing that developers are working on adding female Hrothgar to the game now, but the community should have been surveyed long ago in design stages about whether people would be okay with the idea of gender-locked races before the decision was made to go ahead with what would ultimately be an unpopular design limitation. Players also weren’t surveyed about whether they’d be okay with newer Hrothgar hairstyles having mutilated ears before time was spent working on inferior hair options, and you can see how well that turned out.

Some people also said earlier that this happened because Square Enix originally didn’t have plans to have two gender options to the two races, which… yes? What about it? That’s not providing new information. They shouldn’t have had any arbitrarily gender-locked mechanics in the first place, whether it be with races or clothes, and if the work is only partially complete like the currently limited headgear options for both races, then either hire more developers or don’t release things in an incomplete state.

Sharing this again because I still feel like it’s highly relevant and deserves attention.

[Adamantini]

I don’t understand how there’s not only a decent amount of people who think that female Hrothgar shouldn’t be made since resources or some other double standard, but how they also think it’s fair that people who prefer playing as male characters should have more race options that those who prefer playing as female characters.

BS. I believe in equal rights. Thing that should have been done from the start

(...) It is a good thing that developers are working on adding female Hrothgar to the game now, but the community should have been surveyed long ago in design stages (...)

This. SE has proven time and time again that they don't know what the community wants, and they don't know what's good about the game. A quick search, and the company would know that male Miqo'tes were a popular race, so male Vieras would be very popular. With another quick survey, they would see that players take their character's appearance very seriously, and that limitations on that would suck.

Some people also said earlier that this happened because Square Enix originally didn’t have plans to have two gender options to the two races, which… yes? What about it? That’s not providing new information. They shouldn’t have had any arbitrarily gender-locked mechanics in the first place, whether it be with races or clothes, and if the work is only partially complete like the currently limited headgear options for both races, then either hire more developers or don’t release things in an incomplete state.

The explanation no one accepts is that they were sexist about it. They didn't want to make the sexy man and the muscular woman, and I remember people putting snippets of an interview with Yoshi P saying that rabbit men would be weird.
They said it was a lore problem, but female Hrothgar has always been present in other games (from what the community says), and once they made the new expansion, you see thousands of male Vieras NPCs out there. If the issue were lore, this type of NPC would be as rare as the male moon miqo'te

[SherlottaEryut]

Sharing this again because I still feel like it’s highly relevant and deserves attention.

I've said this before and I'll say it again... NO ONE is against female Hrothgar's implementation, people are worried about the final outcome of their design based on how male Hrothgar are treated. Even if people were against female Hrothgar at this point, do you really think it would make a difference? They've already said its coming, so there's nothing anyone can do about it at this point.

I still stand by my opinion that female Hrothgar should be further postponed, because there's absolutely no rush for them, first and foremost Square need to focus on righting their wrong with the male Hrothgar first.

[MellowMink]

I've said this before and I'll say it again... NO ONE is against female Hrothgar's implementation.

With all due respect, you don’t have to spend that long looking through this thread to find people who don’t want effort spent on it.

[MellowMink]

BS. I believe in equal rights. Thing that should have been done from the start

I said a decent amount of people, not absolutely everyone; if you support female Hrothgar existing, which I also want to see, then my comments weren’t referring to you.

[Adamantini]

I said a decent amount of people, not absolutely everyone; if you support female Hrothgar existing, which I also want to see, then my comments weren’t referring to you.

sorry, I wasn't referring to you, but the type of comment you mentioned.

Editing to explain myself better: I think it's bullshit, the kind of comment about "we should have more options for men" or "why do you want X race, or X gender? Are you not satisfied with what you have?"

I realized that it really gives the impression that I'm referring to you, and for that, I apologize. I should have clarified better what I was talking about.

[Pip_Chick]

I've said this before and I'll say it again... NO ONE is against female Hrothgar's implementation

There are a lot of people that are against female Hrothgar, there are others who are against Hrothgar in general because they consider them to be furry and/or a furry race. But saying that no one is against it, is simply not true.
I for myself do not want them postponed. You may think (from your position) that there is no rush, but from mine and so many others in this thread and outside there is. Maybe not a rush so to say, but I don't want them postponed. I want them done right and I would like to have them and play as them.
I agree that Viera and Hrothgar should be fixed. But from my point of view hair and hats do not take priority to completing a race, if not for choice equality, then for the 100% fact that if they fix Viera M/F and Hrothgar M then when Hrothgar F was to come out with the same limitations, they would not bother to fix them until the next time they would do a big graphical update. They could either blame it on the tiredness of the staff that worked on the other characters and also on the other content OR that they will not be played by a majority so they could postpone it for as long as possible (just like they are doing now with the current Viera and Hrothgar). I would rather have them make Female Hrothgar first and take both Viera and Hrothgar and do them together (And from a game design, asset alteration point of view, that would be far easier and faster. Cause you have the file open, you just make the alteration for all right then and there).

[SturmChurro]

I still stand by my opinion that female Hrothgar should be further postponed, because there's absolutely no rush for them, first and foremost Square need to focus on righting their wrong with the male Hrothgar first.

They should have done the same with male viera, but they kind of set a precedent with them, so now they might have to follow through. Still, we most likely won't see mention of them for another couple years. I'd like to think race implementation and support would be more efficient by then, but who knows..

[Xirean]

They should have done the same with male viera, but they kind of set a precedent with them, so now they might have to follow through. Still, we most likely won't see mention of them for another couple years. I'd like to think race implementation and support would be more efficient by then, but who knows..

This whole situation makes it seem like they don't have a way to make new races being added an efficient process.