Once we're not getting any new races, wouldn't it be nice if Elezen's got an update?

[Imora]

I don't mind the proportions. The heads don't seem too small to me, if anything it's because the bottom of the neck on the shoulders is too wide.

That said, the run animation looks like they really, REALLY need to poop. I'd like a fix.

[Imora]

And that's not okay. I can wear literally anything on my Hyur because everything looks good on me. A race shouldn't be limited to "suitable glamour" to hide its ugliness. :')

All armor and weapons are designed on hyur and them tweaked for other races.

it's like wow and humans/orcs. They pick a race and model around it. This isn't a new tactic.

That's why all your glams look good. it's also why a lot of glams look awful on other races, like, say, lalafell.

[Imora]

Sure, something like that for a dark elf could work in a way. He's a bit light skinned, but different tones can allow a player choice. Generally, elves aren't as bulky as humans, usually either shorter, or taller in stature, but can be about the same. Typically, they are considered good looking. A good example would be to look up high elf in DnD, or elves in general. What I like about DnD specifically, is the amount of variations they have with elves. Their different personalities as well. See, aside from the actual look of the race, personality plays a big role in the presentation of them. Much like how players don't like their hrothgar hunch. With Elezen in FFXIV, they generally have bad animations, in my opinion. Rather, I think more could have been done in their presentation. They definitely need more work done.

Trying to find examples in a game.. recently Baldur's Gate 3 has been doing DnD elves:

This one is my own screenshot of my wood elf druid from last year

Also, Warhammer elves I like as well (Fantasy and 40k Eldar)

Those are humans with pointy ears.

[Absurdity]

Their small heads create the illusion of longer necks and broader shoulders. I've made an edit you can check in my previous posts

I checked them thoroughly as well and the shoulders are still an issue. Even with a bigger head the shoulders are too wide and not in the way that professional swimmers for example have broad shoulders but in an unnatural way, almost as if their shoulder socket isn't connected to their shoulder blade. What also doesn't show on your example is how completely oversized any kind of pauldron is on Elezen, to a ridiculous degree.

All armor and weapons are designed on hyur and them tweaked for other races.

it's like wow and humans/orcs. They pick a race and model around it. This isn't a new tactic.

That's why all your glams look good. it's also why a lot of glams look awful on other races, like, say, lalafell.

They do that for all tall races. Female Miqo'te, Roegadyn, Highlander, Elezen, Au Ra and Viera all just use the female midlander body which is then changed per race by simply editing the skeleton that the body is rigged to.

They can't do that with lalafell because their body is too fundamentally different to a female midlander so they have to create a separate model of any piece of gear specifically for potatos.

[Iscah]

Some might say their small heads are a racial trait. Look at their proportions in the concept art, their small heads are absolutely not a racial trait.

If elezen looked like this I would play one in a heartbeat.

I am honestly confused by these sorts of statements because I am looking at my female Elezen alt right now and she seems to have exactly those proportions. The thing that makes the concept art character's shoulders look less wide is the three-quarter angle of the picture, which you can replicate when taking pictures of your own character, and the positioning of the right hand and fluttering ponytail make the shoulders less pronounced, but that seems to be all.

Also, looking at that concept art absolutely does tell me that small heads are a racial trait. Look at the relative sizes of the heads and necks on those portrait pictures.

[Serilda]

Those are humans with pointy ears.

I thought the same thing. I also like playing elf-inspired races in fantasy games and I prefer my elves to look unique. Weird, even. Maybe playable half-elezen would stop the non-elezen-main folks from trying to turn elezen into yet another conventionally-attractive midlander/miqo'te/viera variant. I like my character's 'unnatural' proportions and the 'unnatural'-ness is a large part of why.

(And for all of the D&D references explaining why elezen need changes, elves in older D&D sourcebooks most certainly did not look conventionally proportional, 'natural' or like humans. Elvaan looked weird too. I liked them.)

[Reese_Clairdale]

I got curious and decided to conduct my own research. Black lines in the first image represent a measurement of the CGI Elezen head. My in-game character was then scaled to match it. The other comparison images are much more rough but I think are still useful. Please keep in mind that things like camera distance, focal length, character stance, lighting, etc, etc. are not going to be identical.

https://imgur.com/a/QlIctOW

My observations:

The head I still think is almost spot on, scaling it bigger would require a very light touch and then another tiny adjustment on neck width. Ears and facial feature size relative to the head could use a little adjusting, but certain aspects of those things can be fine tuned by the player already.

Shoulders are a bit too wide, and the way armored shoulderpads sit are not flush with the side of the upper arm and top of the shoulder joint.

Adjusting the two things above would probably require adjusting the neck length to be slightly shorter. But only very, very slightly.

The way in-game Elezen's spines are angled causes their neck to bend and tilt in very odd ways. This effect can be exaggerated if you use the hotkey to force your character's head to face the camera in extreme positions, or use one of those super-heavy armor skins like the Heavy Darklight Armor.

In-game Elezen arms, torso, and hands are beefy compared to CGI. Great for beating up monsters and saving the universe, maybe not for winning a Hyuran beauty contest.

Conclusion: I still like Elezen. I will continue to play Elezen. Would they benefit from adjustments? Yes, but only if they are directed by someone who understands the appeal of Elezen. I still posit that the people responsible for 1.0 CGI had all of the races nailed perfectly, but obviously compromises had to be made to get everything to work in-game. Basing an entire redesign off of random pieces of concept art from multiple artists would be disastrous.

[Imora]

I thought the same thing. I also like playing elf-inspired races in fantasy games and I prefer my elves to look unique. Weird, even. Maybe playable half-elezen would stop the non-elezen-main folks from trying to turn elezen into yet another conventionally-attractive midlander/miqo'te/viera variant. I like my character's 'unnatural' proportions and the 'unnatural'-ness is a large part of why.

(And for all of the D&D references explaining why elezen need changes, elves in older D&D sourcebooks most certainly did not look conventionally proportional, 'natural' or like humans. Elvaan looked weird too. I liked them.)

Considering Larian actually used head scans to model the heads rather than let you pick face parts like most games... It makes sense their elves for BG3 looks like humans with pointy ears.

I like my elves even elder scrolls style. Mer have very specific facial features. Humans with pointy ears aren't it.

[Imora]

I actually like the neck and head proportions.

Just wish I didn't run with a stick up my rear or my feet didn't clip through everything when I run. It's like clothes aren't rigged to Elezen feet or something. My robe stays down and my feet clip through it.

I run like a 40 year old soccer mom.

[SturmChurro]

I like my elves even elder scrolls style. Mer have very specific facial features. Humans with pointy ears aren't it.

I literally said in my post I like those kind of elves too, including ES elves specifically. I almost exclusively play mer in ES games. My main and pretty much the only character I play is an altmer in ESO, my main ALT that I occasionally play is a bosmer, and the majority of other ESO characters are dunmer! I actually edited out a part of one of my posts in this thread where I stated the concept for ES elves is fine, it's that Bethesda has a tendency to make the characters in their games looks really bad. No, I don't download any of the mods that humanize them either.

For that matter, matter Larian also did elves in Divinity: OS 2 that looked different, and I still played those, the little I played of that game. I have the unpopular opinion of not really liking Divinity: OS 2, but I digress.

Those were just examples I was trying to show in the context of a conversation I was having with someone else, with DnD elves and some in-game examples, and, for that matter, I have said I liked elezen multiple times on this forum. I have said before I think they can look nice with the right glams. I don't play them too often, because of the difficulty of finding glams that look good with them. Their proportions make them look odd in many outfits. Also, I don't like their animations, their run animation is stiff.