Female Hrothgar as a playable race. Show your support!

[Yencat]

I wouldn't disagree that bad hairstyles look bad. But it seems we disagree on both genders for Viera suffering to the same degree on this. Like I said, Males got the same head as Male Mids so if it looks good/ bad on a Middie boi it's gonna look good/ bad on them.

Now, IDK what anecdotal reports you're going off of, as I follow a lot of FF14 social circles and the only whines I hear about Viera are "meh Hats!" and females talking about their 5heads sometimes with a sprinkle of "I wish we had a SMOLL CLAN! About Midlander tall!" in there. I personally file every whiny thing on this forum as meaningless, seeing how this is the one place people seem to whine about every aspect of this game that's not 100% to their liking.
I'm sure I can find someone here who whines that the game doesn't pay them to play it ...

I've never seen anything to suggest that most models share anything other than modified Midlander bodies, so if you have anything to back that up I'd very much like to see it. A quick glance at the MGP ponytail on a male Midlander vs. a male Viera makes me think that's unlikely though.

Even Great Lengths which isn't really a notorious fivehead hairstyle on anyone (not even on female Viera) doesn't sit quite low enough on male Viera, while it looks fine on male Midlander.

I'm not in any FF14 social circles but it has been discussed in the Viera/Hrothgar hair threads both on here and it pops up on Reddit every now and then. There isn't a huge outrage about it or anything, just people expressing disappointment they "can't" use certain hairstyles and making fivehead jokes.

Ehh, I think you're reading "feminine human" features (like smaller mouth/ softer and narrower chin/jaw) as "small animal/ rodent". When I think rodent, I think something like this. HUGE beady pupils-less eyes, huge ears, long whiskers, small-n-fleshy nose. Basically Loporrit.

To each their own, though. Like I said, regardless of liking it or not, it's just a solid example of applying the level of cat traits found on Hrothgar to a female human's face features. (From the snout to the eyes to the pigmentation markings and ear placement, it's a good 1:1 of the levels of animal features the dudes got)
I hold firm in my belief that anyone playing this game long enough to see all the races would have to be fooling themselves to think that they would just make slightly softer versions of hypermasculine faces and make women outta them. IMO, they're gonna make something like that pic and 3 others that are versions of it, with one being more aggro looking and 1 looking like that Ronso gender swap art.

It's not about whether or not I like it (I don't, but that's beside the point) but I'm not the only one in this thread that read them as rodent, so it's clearly not just me. Individually I can see what are meant to look like feline features (the human mouths definitely not though.) but putting them all together it just doesn't look right. Barring maybe the first of the three images there's just something off about them to the point where if it wasn't posted in this thread but I saw it on Google images without context I don't know if I would have guessed they were meant to look feline.

[reivaxe]

I've never seen anything to suggest that most models share anything other than modified Midlander bodies, so if you have anything to back that up I'd very much like to see it. A quick glance at the MGP ponytail on a male Midlander vs. a male Viera makes me think that's unlikely though.

I have no clue what you're getting at, everything other than Lala and Roe bros (and now Hrothgar males) is ultimately traced back to being a modified Middie.
Femroe and Female Viera are both modified female midlander bodies ... are they the same? Does armor fit them the same? Are they both of the same quality and success? Which looks closer to a midlander, bodyshape wise? Also, I legit gave you a picture of their noggins next to each other, Male Viera are updated and altered Male Miqote bods with Male midlander head and a posture that sits somewhere between them. Female Viera and Hrothgar? We have confirmation many times over that they have unique heads that had to be changed going into 6.0 to make them suitable for shared hair.

If you wanna ignore that, then you do you.

It's not about whether or not I like it (I don't, but that's beside the point) but I'm not the only one in this thread that read them as rodent, so it's clearly not just me.

Oh, you mean the Femroe player who hates the idea of Hrothgals looking like anything other than beefed out linebackers, just barely different from the males? Great company to be in, lol! I legit avoided posting my own hand made fan-art here long ago because of how I've seen people passionate about their steroid girls react to art that doesn't affirm that.
Like I said, if you read that as rodent, then I think you have a misunderstanding of what rodents look like or a misconception of what lion features are when not placed on a more animalistic head.

Not that it matters, like I said ... for a race of "lion dudes" only 1 actually clearly looks like a cat.

Face 2 looks like a Werewolf mostly, some feline hints tho.
Face 3 could straight up be placed on a demon with wings and it would look right at home. My favorite of the 4 for how demonic and fantastical it looks.
Face 4? The "Ronso" face for the "FF14 Ronso" race? This is what I see when I look at it because I've never seen a big cat with such a smashed in, downward turned nose.



This is why I've been sure that "if they made Hrothgals, they wouldn't even bother making them matching cats with the males and would go for something like house cats or small wild breeds" from the start. Outside of having 1 "Ronso" face, they can be w/e beastly vaguely "cat" like thing.

Which is kinda the point of that whole post. Hrothgar are not Khajiit, they have a mix of human and beast like features in their face. Once you break down all the human and beast traits and place them on a feminine face that's inline with legit every other female in the game (including Femroe), you're gonna get something that looks something like that picture.

I could show more cat faced examples, but that misses the point entirely ... as they will look far more animal than Hrothgar males do. So regardless of what animal you think it looks like, that's not the point being made.

I hope they will do the same with the females. Better faces, better emotes, CUT THE HUNCH! and better walking animations. For me as long as they look like they are part of the same species is all that matters. I said before even a few pages back that the AI-generated art looked good (though the first one with her eyes closed was my personal favourite), but people need to get that it looks uncanny valley, because it is! Ai-generated art is a computer trying to decipher what you meant and recreating it into an art piece. It's not my favourite form of art, simply because of the uncanny valley effect it gives me. But I understood what you meant, trying to point at it and see the feminine features combined with the animal features to result in a more softer feminine look, rather than that of imposing males. Which job it manages to do, throughout the responses people may have called it more of a rat than a lion (which I can see why, but the ears and nose is very much more feline than rodent), but they never confused it for a male, which I think it was your point (you can correct me here), making them look feline, but keeping them feminine through the visual ques. That and for the human eye the emotions and faces of animals are hard to read if not exaggerated, but we can read Hrothgar (due to their human features) and so I hope the females will get the same treatment. Or made to look better and more expressive!

100% this, spot on.

[Yencat]

<snip>

Yes, everyone except Roes and Lala's share a modified Midlander body, which is what I said. Beyond having humanoid heads (which everyone except Hrothgar has) I asked if you have anything to back up the idea that male Viera heads are somehow modified male Midlander heads to the point that what looks good on one would look good on another, despite several hairstyles looking different on either of them.

But I see that you don't have anything beyond "trust me, because they look basically the same", your usual condescension, and trying to take a swipe at... I guess Zanarkand-Ronso? I don't know if Sturm has strong opinions on female Hrothgar beyond saying what you posted looks like a rat, so I'll leave you to it.

[SturmChurro]

Yes, everyone except Roes and Lala's share a modified Midlander body, which is what I said. Beyond having humanoid heads (which everyone except Hrothgar has) I asked if you have anything to back up the idea that male Viera heads are somehow modified male Midlander heads to the point that what looks good on one would look good on another, despite several hairstyles looking different on either of them.

But I see that you don't have anything beyond "trust me, because they look basically the same", your usual condescension, and trying to take a swipe at... I guess Zanarkand-Ronso? I don't know if Sturm has strong opinions on female Hrothgar beyond saying what you posted looks like a rat, so I'll leave you to it.

I didn't really read anything that they posted, or has been posted. I was just responding to the image and some of the commentary on that.

As far as whatever this thing about hairs that "should look good on both midlander and viera", now I don't really know the context here, but no, that would not be the case. I mean, sure, it could be argued it's down to personal preference, but aside from that, they both have different facial features, and also midlanders have ears on the side of their head; making particular hairs look more natural. Not all shared hairs would look good due to a variety of factors. Custom adjustments would preferably be made to make them look better, rather than slapping them on a viera head.

[Yencat]

I didn't really read anything that they posted, or has been posted. I was just responding to the image and some of the commentary on that.

As far as whatever this thing about hairs that "should look good on both midlander and viera", now I don't really know the context here, but no, that would not be the case. I mean, sure, it could be argued it's down to personal preference, but aside from that, they both have different facial features, and also midlanders have ears on the side of their head; making particular hairs look more natural. Not all shared hairs would look good due to a variety of factors. Custom adjustments would preferably be made to make them look better, rather than slapping them on a viera head.

All because I said male Viera have wonky fiveheads in certain shared hairstyles just like female Viera do, which is true.

And 2/3 of those AI pictures posted look like rodents rather than feline, which is my opinion.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Pip_Chick]

Don't want to sound rude, but could we please keep the male Viera discussion for the male Viera thread or the hair thread? And just come back on topic, please?
And possibly not attack anyone for their taste in how we want Female Hrothgar to look?

At the end of the day, the design (after 7 months) should have been decided on, whatever the devs decided on their appearance should have long been in development and should at least be at the 3D modelling stage. We will see what we get when they will add them. Even though I would like to see some concept art to have a vague idea of what we should expect. Until then all takes are valid as far as I am concerned. Both the "hyper-masculine linebackers" (whatever this means), the AI-generated ones and the conventional beast beauty like the work seen from Karmaho (I already shown my bias) and the fan interpretation on this thread.

As I said before, as long as you can place them next to the males and make them look like the same species is all that matters in the end.

[Yencat]

Don't want to sound rude, but could we please keep the male Viera discussion for the male Viera thread or the hair thread? And just come back on topic, please?
And possibly not attack anyone for their taste in how we want Female Hrothgar to look?

At the end of the day, the design (after 7 months) should have been decided on, whatever the devs decided on their appearance should have long been in development and should at least be at the 3D modelling stage. We will see what we get when they will add them. Even though I would like to see some concept art to have a vague idea of what we should expect. Until then all takes are valid as far as I am concerned. Both the "hyper-masculine linebackers" (whatever this means), the AI-generated ones and the conventional beast beauty like the work seen from Karmaho (I already shown my bias) and the fan interpretation on this thread.

Agreed. They will have settled on a design and might even be (close to) finished already, they'll sit on their work until they're ready to reveal them regardless.

As I said before, as long as you can place them next to the males and make them look like the same species is all that matters in the end.

Yep, which is the only reason why 2/3 of the AI art look off, in my opinion.

"hyper-masculine linebackers" (whatever this means)

the conventional beast beauty like the work seen from Karmaho

That Karmaho art and similar work is what reivaxe considers hyper-masculine linebackers.

[reivaxe]

Yes, everyone except Roes and Lala's share a modified Midlander body, which is what I said. Beyond having humanoid heads (which everyone except Hrothgar has) I asked if you have anything to back up the idea that male Viera heads are somehow modified male Midlander heads to the point that what looks good on one would look good on another, despite several hairstyles looking different on either of them.

What do you mean "to the point"? It takes less modification to stick closer to a something's base shape than it does to make something wholly different that requires you redo it to try to give it the same functions as the base shape. Got literal confirmation from YP that they had to alter both Hrothgar and Viera female heads to allow for shared hair but didn't have to bother with that for MV as they were made with this in mind and I've shown you comparison pics, want another random hairstyle? You've shown and said nothing beyond "Nuh uh..".

To recap, you claim that they're just as 5headed on just as many hairs as the females by posting a pic ... I show that those hairs look just as bad on male mids and show that their head shapes are very close to male mids. You claim everything is based on mids anyway, I point out that though that's true, not everything looks or fits the same on everyone just because they're all mid mods (as someone who played Femroe for years, I can tell you that they sure AF don't wear most gear as well as Middies).

I've played every female in this game and can show you a legit example of this with hair. Here, this is one of those hairstyles that look like shat on Miqote females. Why is it that the hairstyle looks fine on every other female (including Draggos), but not Miqote? Prob because Miqote have a unique head shape among the base races in a game that didn't have shared hairs (even required you to pay RL money to change hair) and IIRC this hairstyle was one of the first shared hairs added in the 2.0 hair batch patch. Prob also because their ears are part of their hair AND the inner ear is its own thing that's connected to the head, making such short styles problematic to handle. Either way, they clearly take Miqote heads into account now, even though we can still clearly see that some old hairstyles on them don't work as well as others. Miqote are the reason I'm sure we will never ever get a mohawk, it simply wouldn't work on them.

But I see that you don't have anything beyond "trust me, because they look basically the same", your usual condescension, and trying to take a swipe at... I guess Zanarkand-Ronso? I don't know if Sturm has strong opinions on female Hrothgar beyond saying what you posted looks like a rat, so I'll leave you to it.

You've offered literally nothing other than your anecdotal of "trust me, I got my finger on the pulse of Male Viera players!", I've actually shown pics and examples. And Zan became the reason I stopped posting the handful of actual Hrothgal fan-art here in favor of just posting furry art. Because I'd hate to take someone's art from elsewhere online who actually plays this game, post it here, and have them possibly come here to see someone trash it for not being what they like when they didn't bother posting it here. You all prove to be strangely defensive about what you want, my goal in this thread has always been theorizing about what I think the devs will actually do over what I personally want and sharing in the interest of people who like the idea of Hrothgals..

Anyway, if you paid more attention to these post, you'd see you missed the point by a mile and a half...

Well, they said they looked at quite a bit of fan art before starting work on male Viera ...

The problem with trying to apply MV logic to Hrothgals is that MV had tons of fan art and fan demand swirling around them. Everyone assumes that Hrothgals would just be furry faced femroe, the least appealing female in the game, so there's been far far less hype or faaaaar less art for them. Even to this day there's very lil fan art of them, with most people being content pointing at the Gender swap Ronso/ Official female Ronso art/ Bless cats and going "That, probable".
We all know we're only getting Female Hrothgar because of how hard MV fans went, to the point where YP even had to address their desire for certain body types. They're not comparable in this sense.

Same here, I don't see the Au'ra we got as a failure or mistake. They give diversity and that is what matters, diversity = options; options = good.

Seeing this forum's reaction to Au Ra is pretty much why I give very little stock to what I read here. Female Au Ra are the 2nd most poplar females, only 2nd to Miqote, yet people will still try to bash them here (which is strange, given the race was introduced with a Female NPC. We knew what the females looked like body wise before the males).

I too wished they were tall at the time when they were revealed alongside the dudes. But I got over that a long time ago, if SE wants to make a JPop idol female and people enjoy it then that's all that matters in my book. I value people's enjoyment over trying to fight against every form of sexual dimorphism, and player characters in MMOs are the one times when you gotta really take that into account, as it's a huge and permanent investment for something with finite resources.

The Au Ra we got are just Miqo'te 2.0. Actual diversity would have been adding the badass version because even now your options are quite limited if you want to play a female race in FFXIV but don't want to be "cute."

I wouldn't call Thighlanders/ Elezen/ Femroe/ Viera "cute".
Half the females in the game are not smoll-cute-waifu types. I'm fairly sure the only reason people think there's more "cute" options is because, besides Viera, all the tall and non-cute females are bottom barrel unpopular, so you rarely see them.

[Yencat]

I'll gladly continue talking to you about Viera fiveheads in a more appropriate thread.

And Zan became the reason I stopped posting the handful of actual Hrothgal fan-art here in favor of just posting furry art. Because I'd hate to take someone's art from elsewhere online who actually plays this game, post it here, and have them possibly come here to see someone trash it for not being what they like when they didn't bother posting it here. You all prove to be strangely defensive about what you want, my goal in this thread has always been theorizing about what I think the devs will actually do over what I personally want and sharing in the interest of people who like the idea of Hrothgals..

Beyond a passing curiosity in what they might look like I'm really not all that interested in female Hrothgar so I'm not sure who you mean by "you all" getting defensive about what I/we want since I haven't really expressed much of anything beyond agreeing they should look like they're the same species and they shouldn't look like housecats to the male Hrothgars big cats? I doubt I'd be playing one regardless and as such don't participate in this thread much, but I assume I'm still allowed an opinion.

2/3 pieces of AI art you posted didn't fit the bill of looking like the same species in my opinion, I only brought up that I wasn't the only person that thought those didn't look feline because you insisted I must be confusing feminine features for a rodent, or that I don't actually know what lion ears or feline features look like.

I don't see how your personal vendetta with Zanarkand-Ronso has anything to do with them (and Sturm also) saying they also felt they looked more rodent than feline, unless you think because Zanarkand wants something different from you their opinion is completely worthless? In any case it came across as very petty.

The problem with trying to apply MV logic to Hrothgals is that MV had tons of fan art and fan demand swirling around them. Everyone assumes that Hrothgals would just be furry faced femroe, the least appealing female in the game, so there's been far far less hype or faaaaar less art for them. Even to this day there's very lil fan art of them, with most people being content pointing at the Gender swap Ronso/ Official female Ronso art/ Bless cats and going "That, probable".
We all know we're only getting Female Hrothgar because of how hard MV fans went, to the point where YP even had to address their desire for certain body types. They're not comparable in this sense.

Okay, but I never said they are comparable in that sense.

Pip_Chick likes Karmaho's take on female Hrothgar and hopes they look similar to that, Karmaho's art has been posted here and on their Twitter, I said they looked at fan art before starting work on male Viera so there's a decent chance they will have seen that art too. The volume of art has very little to do with it, if anything it makes it more likely they've actually seen it.