The Women FFXIV Needs

[MikkoAkure]

No discussion regarding female character design would be complete without addressing a key issue that seems to hinder them: the fear of clipping and long hair. Unfortunately over the course of the game we have seen clipping be used as a means to explain why certain designs are impossible or improbable. However, especially given how well received the visual design for Venat was, I strongly believe that it is essential to look into having more npcs with such hair as well as offering similar hairstyles for players to use themselves. Clipping is a small price to pay for more unique and varied designs. This can be applied not only to female customization, but also to the issue concerning Hrothgar hairstyles as well.

The following are some iconic female characters whose designs I’d like to go into depth on as to why they work well and what they bring to the table in terms of visual variety. Given the oversaturation of blonds/light haired women in the cast, I chose to exclude such characters from the following list:

It's a bit weird to call out character designs for women in FFXIV and mostly concentrate on hair color and length of all things.

The game's lighting sucks when it comes to darker-skinned characters and that really needs to be fixed which I think will make SE make more dark-skinned characters, both male and female. Almost every male race has an "old" option, but that's absent for female character options and NPCs will go from looking like a 16 year old despite being 40, to straight to being a raisin and using the same old face common in NPCs.

One thing I think the game does do decent in, is that not every female NPC in the game is some sort of idealized, submissive princess, which plagues a lot of fantasy games. While she definitely does need more characterization since "mysterious" isn't a personality trait that can fully carry a character, Y'shtola doesn't need to be "relatable" to be a good character. I think they can give her more traits that don't necessarily make her relate to the broadest possible audience. If it's not a submissive girly character, writers often swing wildly into the tomboy, aggressive archetype (but who will be submissive as soon as she falls in love with the main character) as if those are the only two type of women who exist. While FFXIV does lean into each direction I think there's at least more variation than most.

The thing we don't have a lot of though are women who don't have an explanation for being bad/villainous. Yotsuyu was a good villain character, but we had to be spoonfed an explanation of why she's bad unlike a lot of the other villainous characters who are just allowed to be bad from the get go and don't get any redemption later. Fordola similarly got her own sob story. It's as if the writers treat being good/nice to people is the "womanly default" and any female character who doesn't fit that needs an explanation why and we need to feel bad for them. While there are some, a lot of them are locked in the side quests and not in the MSQ.

[KariTheFox]

It's a bit weird to call out character designs for women in FFXIV and mostly concentrate on hair color and length of all things.

Yeah, it's uh... interesting that the thread about men focuses on a wider variety of body types and facial features - but the main thrust of this one is more outfits and hairstyles to put on the same young and conventionally attractive template. If that's the problem, just have Y'shtola change outfits every patch.

Or we could actually talk about more diverse options for body types, skin tones, and women older than 20-something. Without those being dismissed as "fringe aesthetics".