Female Hrothgar as a playable race. Show your support!

[reivaxe]

Please don't redefine words, the meaning of popularity, conform to the dictionary is: "The state or condition of being liked, admired, or supported by many people."
"Not trying to make the most popular thing is one thing, using that as an excuse to make something utterly unpopular for a game is another"? You don't know how popular they will be until they come out that is an objective fact, as well as that beast races are a niche not everyone enjoys.[

I think you don't understand, I didn't redefine "Popularity". I said that popularity is determined by the execution of something, not just the concept of or the idea of it. Like I said, I could take the concept of Draggo girls and make it far, FAR less popular with some changes. First, what's the driving concept behind Au Ra? Reptile/ demon race ... that's it. Does this scream "Popular"? In fact, the devs made them as "beastly" as they could without falling into the Viera/ Hrothgar head limit trap, so even if it doesn't seem like it ... Draggo girls are the most beastly females in the game until Hrothgals come.

So yeah, let's change somethings about female Au Ra that would be in line with the concept of "reptile/ demon person" but make them less popular.
What if ... they had huge, thick plates of scales covering the top half of their face (maybe even making it look like cracked porcelain!)? And along with that, what if the lower half of their face looked like Mileena's from MK? They would still be able to wear headgear, shockingly enough, because that's all a very human shaped head. What if instead of being demure, their animations were savage and tense? Instead of having elegant looking horns, theirs are now just as spikey and oversized as the males...

If you applied all these changes to them ... I'm 100% sure they wouldn't be as popular as they currently are, not by a long shot. They would still have the same idea behind them (reptile/ demon people) but very different reaches in popularity. Assuming you know what the devs WOULD do and how far they WOULD push something, and coming to the conclusion that the concept (Beast race) is already "niche" is a mistake imo. I'm sure I already see a race beast race in this game that would be "Popular" if made PC (Loporrits). So yeah, they can design them in a way that reaches/ appeals to a decent amount of people oooor in a way that makes just 5 people happy ... it's completely up to them. They don't have to be overly concerned with making them overly popular to still take this into consideration when designing them. Like I said, there's a difference between accepting that what you want to do might not be super popular annnd simply making something to be a niche within a niche. Like, there's a reason I don't think they're gonna look like Dulia-Chai

Truly, I'm not and never have been a fan of thinking that we can dictate or demand anything outta these devs to suit our wants/ expectations/ reasoning. Theorizing what they WILL do based on what they HAVE done is 1 thing, saying that "X is WRONG/ BAD and they shouldn't do it" is lame af to me.

Like 1 of your examples ... this bull/ cow coupleDOES look like the same race to me, the same way these two people and these Apes are of the same species/ race.

Like this ...

Your example shows a lizard woman with breasts. So to me, "what makes sense" isn't expressed by that example.

I like breasts as much as the next person, but felines of all sizes only have visible breasts when nursing. It would make sense, then, for fem Hrothgar PCs to not have much if any visible breast -- as a I posted previously, the slider could go from "none" to "A-cup." And I don't see much use in fem Hrothgar being just another hourglass body with fur and a different head.

It's not like women need large breasts to be beautiful, after all.
There's some very beautiful small-breasted ballet dancers out there, for example.
If fem Viera bodies are modeled on super-models, maybe fem Hrothgar could be modeled on ballerinas.

I have absolutely no problem with the devs taking the female Au Ra model and up scaling it to make feminine, thin, ballerina like elegant Hrothgals with flat b-cup-at-best boobs. That would actually be unique, all the women taller than Mid's are all stacked in boobs, and I can agree to an extent that it would show a different side to beauty by embracing something they haven't tried yet.

But the logic fails on me, I don't think of Hrothgar as "CATS that can talk" so saying that they shouldn't have boobs is just silly. If the devs want to make them small/ flat chested-yet-feminine af Ballerina types, then cool. But I'm not with saying that they should or shouldn't do something or how far they should or shouldn't go just to please my personal taste.

If they make Hrothgals have heads that are just stylized cat heads and have them look as trash as the males do in most shared hairstyles (in the EXPAC we're getting a graphics update no less) then so be it. If they make them Mithra I'm fine with that to. So long as they feminine, I'm sure I'll be happy.

[Pip_Chick]

If they make Hrothgals have heads that are just stylized cat heads and have them look as trash as the males do in most shared hairstyles (in the EXPAC we're getting a graphics update no less) then so be it. If they make them Mithra I'm fine with that to. So long as they feminine, I'm sure I'll be happy.

I think we can agree to disagree on this one. Warrior women are still feminine and beautiful, even if you might not see them that way. The bull image is a complete and utter disappointment, they look like the same species, but not a full grown man and woman. More like a dad and daughter thing going on there with immense perv pandering on the female.

Mithra is literally the Miquo'te of FFXI. No one wants a bigger Miquo'te cause that would be a waste of time. Why are you keeping it to the flat faces? Everyone who wants to play Hrothgar doesn't want just a taller Miquo'te with a fur texture. Tons of fan art that I have seen has them with Snouts and look like a female variant of a Hrothgar instead of a bad-looking Mythra!

When I say I want them to look cohesive and like they are part of the Hrothgar species, I mean a Beast-looking woman, not a Miquo'te, Mithra or the Loprits, they all mean nothing to me or this discussion cause they are all FLAT FACED when Hrothgar are not! Instead of a perv pandering flat face woman with a fur texture slapped on, why can't we get something cool? And just on the fear that not a lot of people are gonna play them. And no those won't be 5 people as you say, even female Roe has over 15K players (at endgame) and they are the least played race/gender combo.

Instead of concerning yourself with what the players that already play the game think, why not consider the people that would like to play the game but don't want to play any of the current races, but might like Female Hrothgar? That is and was the original point with Hrothgar. They added Viera for the existing players, but Hrothgar was always meant to attract new and different people into the game. There are a lot of players who ONLY play beast races and won't touch the game unless they can play as that and YP knows this, that is why he said that adding them is for the long-time health of the game. I know a lot of people who flat-out refused to play this game purely because they weren't given any options in terms of beast races.

That is why I say to not give them a flat face purely on the "Their hats will fit" notion, cause that is a non-issue! Wanna know how much it takes to modify a hat to fit on a Hrothgar head? 10 minutes. +/- 2 minutes for opening the folders. For that to have a botched race? No thank you. Make them right or not at all. At this point I don't even care about the body, I just want them to keep their beast features. Just as players hated when Hrothgar lost their ears, just like that they will get pissed for having a Mithra with a furry texture on top.

[reivaxe]

I think we can agree to disagree on this one. Warrior women are still feminine and beautiful, even if you might not see them that way.

This line of logic always leads to .. "So why not have them look like Dulia-Chai with a beast like head? They're not overly focused on making them popular, right? And they're gonna be niche anyway, so why not have them rep the obese and fight against Fatphobia for the handful who are interested in that type of character?" in my mind. Something maybe not being popular doesn't really write a free check to toss away all game demographic logic imo.

And it may not seem like it, but I absolutely loathe talking about the popularity of beast races in MMOs. The notion that they're all doomed to be niche/ very unpopular no matter what pretty much comes outta nowhere space these days, as ... MMOs are a dead genre and there's only 3 big ones out right now that are not FF14.

Using WoW stats as a base? I toss those in the trash. WoW races are class locked/ Faction locked/ some must be unlocked in game/ they have like 100 races and can fart them out however often they want because WoW runs on a potato.
ESO stats? Can't use those stats, the race bonus/ boons makes some races meta for some classes. So Khajiit being one of the most popular races in a game with a very good population spread across races means nothing apparently.
What's comparable to FF14? GW2 ... no race locked classes and no meta race/ class combos. All races have good spread and yeah, Charr come in last. But wait, Male Charr are the 2nd most popular male race and the most popular non-human or female Norn option. The reason the race is in last is that people who love playing big/ loud monster cat dudes don't want to play the basically-no-sexual-dimorphism females.

Other than that? All other MMOs are either Eastern Gotcha/ loot box/ P2W trash with only humans. Or they're things looong dead like Wild Star that started death spiraling the moment they came out. Or they're like Bless and have been released/ Re-released over and over because they keep crashing and burning AND they're race/ class locked anyway. Or there's Tera, which is shut/ shutting down after all these years now ... and was loot-box trash marketed purely to Pedo-bait lovers.

Like, there's simply no way to convince me that there's no way to design something more animal like that gets decent love in this game. Perhaps what you envision wouldn't be popular, but that's not the only option. Like, what's even the "magic amount" to this? Is this or this too beastly to be decently popular? How many MMOs got generally attractive furry types, anyway?

So yeah, that's always a hill I'm willing to die on even though I really don't care to bring it up. "It's gonna be niche anyway" is just always gonna fall flat to me.
And yeah, I really don't care about large amounts of sexual dimorphism. It's a part of the world, and knowing customers means knowing that groups pick certain things for certain reasons. Rejecting that in the name of visual fairness simply leads to fewer people enjoying something they could have enjoyed.
So yeah, we'd have to agree to disagree ... some 6ft Bull chilling with a short stack bull is cool with me. lul

That sounds awesome.

I know, that's why I framed it that way!
Cause it's fair, some would love that ... but I don't think they would be the 2nd most popular females in the game like that. The very concept of a demon/ reptile girl isn't in of itself a super popular idea. Making them the way they currently are is why they're popular AF. They could have made choices that would have made them far less popular, just like they can make choices that result in more or fewer people playing Hrothgals.

[SturmChurro]

...

Now that shared hairs are being made available and new ones too, I definitely just don't see them going the route of male hrothgar and making them so incompatible. Even if they would somehow come out quite bestial, I'm sure compromises will be made to allow for the easier addition of hairs in the future. Those compromises most likely involving the reduction of pronounced racial features, different head sizes, etc..

I know, that's why I framed it that way!
Cause it's fair, some would love that ... but I don't think they would be the 2nd most popular females in the game like that. The very concept of a demon/ reptile girl isn't in of itself a super popular idea.

A demon girl concept is a popular idea, but them being monstrous isn't so much, for sure.

[Midareyukki]

Like, there's simply no way to convince me that there's no way to design something more animal like that gets decent love in this game. Perhaps what you envision wouldn't be popular, but that's not the only option. Like, what's even the "magic amount" to this? Is this or this too beastly to be decently popular? How many MMOs got generally attractive furry types, anyway?

The reason they don't usually make lean characters like that is because it's not "realistic".
...okay, I need to explain this one.

Essentially what I mean is that "In real life, where they draw inspiration from these races", animals like bears, lions, tigers and wolves are notoriously muscular. Hell, look no further than the tiger for just how massive their freaking arm muscles are.

Which is why they mostly only ever create races like those. So when you add those images as examples of what would be decently popular, I don't doubt they'd be played. A lot of people likely would play them, 100%. After all, people play Elezen (I'm sorry).
The issue is that you shouldn't always conflate popularity with design. Because one thing is "people would play the heck out of this", but it doesn't matter if most game devs just look at a big animal that sounds cool and ferocious and just makes them super buffed as a result. Traditionally, races who are that lean and jovial looking tend to be set as mages or chivalric, not a Proud Warrior Race which is usually what you tend to see from these races. Bozja, the Charr as a whole, even the Worgen exude that sort of energy. I say "traditionally", because they really don't have to be. The issue is that most game devs are older people who are used to a more conservative outlook on what race is meant to do what role in their world. We still live in a Tolkien-inspired narrative where big guys are tough warriors and lean guys are fragile magic weavers.

Sexual dimorphism isn't that bad either. It just doesn't always have to be for the lean and mean types. That's what Viera have, and it's clearly an option. I wouldn't mind at all if female Hrothgar looked bulky and large, but that's my opinion and beauty standard. I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't accept large women without calling them "too manly". If they want to make something like the one you posted, Reivaxe, they really wouldn't do too bad going for making another race. The Lupine are available :P

Reivaxe's right when she says that the "it's unpopular" argument is total BS. Furry/Beast races are popular, and not just in GW2. Hrothgar just suffer from a whole swathe of issues, many of which repel people from even trying it. I mean, why waste a Fantasia for something inferior, right? Plus, according to the census, while Hrothgar are still low on the total, they outnumber other races.

[Rokke]

I mean, why waste a Fantasia for something inferior, right? Plus, according to the census, while Hrothgar are still low on the total, they outnumber other races.

if you are going to use statistics you should be consistent across the numbers you are pulling. the full numbers paint a picture that you do not get if you pick total pop for some and active pop for others.

[Midareyukki]

if you are going to use statistics you should be consistent across the numbers you are pulling. the full numbers paint a picture that you do not get if you pick total pop for some and active pop for others.

...ok so you're literally saying an image that is pulled from the primary page to show that Hrothgars are listed overall as outnumbering Male Viera, and at endgame outnumbering Roegadyn and male Elezen, and thus NOT the 2% people insist we are to the point of irrelevancy isn't consistent?

I don't think that's an issue with me being inconsistent, it's an issue with you not getting the point of the image.

I'm not comparing the races.

I'm stating that we outnumber others in specific aspects of the game, and thus should not be denied attention simply because "Oh you're the least played race in the game". When we clearly are not.

Because on the first post I posted that image, I even conceded: "On overall numbers of active accounts, we outnumber male Viera but do not outnumber them in the amount of players at Endgame. Instead, we outnumber other races. In total, however, on both accounts we are not the rock bottom people insist we are, thus we are not irrelevant and content SHOULD be made with quality for us."

Does this satisfy your criteria? Or are you going to twist the purpose of the image once again?

I do apologize if it wasn't clear when posted, but personally I feel like calling me "inconsistent" is the same as "twisting the data to serve my narrative". At no point have I done that. The whole point was to, as Reivaxe said, show that we're not as unpopular as other choices, and thus arguments that are based on that notion are false.

"You should have added the other values", irrelevant to the point, it's implied they're higher.
"You're comparing among the only races you selected", first, not races, options, and secondly, even if I did, that's the point: to prove the statement that "Hrothgars are not the lowest used option". Anything else is fluff. It's not an image used to prove superiority against other races in any way. Collectively, Roegadyn, Elezen or Viera would still outnumber us. The issue is that we're a race of only one option, and if we go by that standard, we're not the least played one.

There's absolutely zero difference between me doing that, you doing that just with more data, or either of us saying "Go see the Census for yourself". The result will still be the same: there is one option as of 6.1 that's lower than Hrothgar. Meaning the argument that "we're the lowest used" is, again, false and should not be used to discredit us nor the content and quality we ask for. If all those other options can have good quality stuff made for them, why can't we?

[Rokke]

post was too long to quote, sorry

And I quote: "while Hrothgar are still low on the total, they outnumber other races."
pictured: total hroths vs total M viera, EW hroths vs EW F Elezen/M Roe

I did not mention any 2%'s because I still don't know where 2% came from outside seeing it posted here on the forums. Was it from Lucky Bancho? A Famitsu or Reddit poll? Official forums shitposting that became accepted as fact? Who knows. I have also not mentioned any population of being deserving/non deserving of anything solely due to population size, because using that a metric of what we get would end in F miqo'te/au ra exclusive everything. But picking 2 charts and pointing at aspects that suit "outnumbering" in and only in said aspects is quite literally cherry picking.

[reivaxe]

Now that shared hairs are being made available and new ones too, I definitely just don't see them going the route of male hrothgar and making them so incompatible. Even if they would somehow come out quite bestial, I'm sure compromises will be made to allow for the easier addition of hairs in the future. Those compromises most likely involving the reduction of pronounced racial features, different head sizes, etc..

Agreed.

A demon girl concept is a popular idea, but them being monstrous isn't so much, for sure.

"Demon/ reptilian girl" is already on the monster scale, regardless of if they just have "cute horns and maybe a tail ;3" or if they look like some 4 armed, bat winged she devil thing with fangs and scales, they would both under that title of "demonic". How visually appealing they look is a matter of execution, which was my point. Talking about Bless, there's no doubt in my mind that if SE made something like this (Which looks like a lala/ Lop faced furry child) a race that looked closer to Lala or middie body wise (as to not look like actual children) ... it would be popular. Because it leans heavily on cute. Making tiger headed beef backed buffed out women wouldn't be as popular, even though both are clearly animal/ non-human looking.
So the concept of an animal like race is never an auto-unpopular concept to me, in character design you can always make some basic concept like "animal/ Demonic/ Monster people" look cute/ sexy/ appealing enough if you know what you're doing and try to set them up for success.

boom

I will agree that devs tend to view "Animal people" as stereotyped proud warriors tropes. Really, if anyone's interested in animal people, I'd suggest waiting to see wtf Riot games MMO does.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

I will agree that devs tend to view "Animal people" as stereotyped proud warriors tropes. Really, if anyone's interested in animal people, I'd suggest waiting to see wtf Riot games MMO does.

So basically we should all just shove it and look for a new game....great attitude lol
So we just shouldn't get Hrothgar Females that look like sensible Female Counterparts to the males, they should be adorable and humanlike just cause 'popular'
Please SE do the right thing....cater to and give your Hrothgar Players what they want, and not do some lazy BS For 'Popularity'
If you really cared about that, you wouldn't have made Hrothgar in the 1st place. If you make a Beastrace, then make a Beastrace.