Female Hrothgar as a playable race. Show your support!

[Midareyukki]

Debating on how bestial they should be, popularity, etc. has kind of always been discussed in the female hrothgar thread like this. It's why I was saying last time I didn't have the energy.

Very animalistic would get in the way, it's more of how pronounced those features can be without becoming problematic for hairstyle implementation. Most hairstyles need tweaking even on female viera, but they can prevent the amount of it needed, and still look good, if they plan in advance. Unlike with male hrothgar, which I can take a guess that they had zero plans to add the shared hairs to, which has had repercussions on the implementation of these hairs.

Oh I was just talking about how much those arguments really only chalked up to beauty standards and that people likely won't have the same view of what's cool and what isn't. You do have some poor wayward souls (:P) who like the new Hrothgar hairstyles. And frankly? They're a minority, they're valid, slay queens, but just... a bit more quality next time at least >.º
Same with Hrothgal's faces. As long as they don't look like the actual butt of Lucifer, all I can realistically ask for is that there's some quality assurance. Mainly in what the hairstyles will be like, how they choose to adapt non-Hrothgar hairstyles if any... stuff like that. They need to think a priori, and not wing it after the deed's done.

they had zero plans to add the shared hairs to, which has had repercussions on the implementation of these hairs

Exactly.

Which is why I think Zanarkand's also correct when they say, and I paraphrase bc this is really what I got out of what they said, that the devs likely already have some design going on. The real thing we should be asking the dev team is... well, a) showing support, but also b) that we really want Hrothgals to be able to access some specific features. That way, when they realize we want them in the future, they aren't caught off guard and rushedly make something up on the spot with weaksauce quality assurance.

[SturmChurro]

Oh I was just talking about how much those arguments really only chalked up to beauty standards and that people likely won't have the same view of what's cool and what isn't. You do have some poor wayward souls (:P) who like the new Hrothgar hairstyles. And frankly? They're a minority, they're valid, slay queens, but just... a bit more quality next time at least >.º
Same with Hrothgal's faces. As long as they don't look like the actual butt of Lucifer, all I can realistically ask for is that there's some quality assurance. Mainly in what the hairstyles will be like, how they choose to adapt non-Hrothgar hairstyles if any... stuff like that. They need to think a priori, and not wing it after the deed's done.



Exactly.

Which is why I think Zanarkand's also correct when they say, and I paraphrase bc this is really what I got out of what they said, that the devs likely already have some design going on. The real thing we should be asking the dev team is... well, a) showing support, but also b) that we really want Hrothgals to be able to access some specific features. That way, when they realize we want them in the future, they aren't caught off guard and rushedly make something up on the spot with weaksauce quality assurance.

We should always be striving for quality.

With female hrothgar we can take some educated guesses on how they might look like due to the mosaic, which directly compares them to a roe, and the artwork of an actual hrothgar queen. I'd say they have a general idea of what they will look like. Their body type is probably the easiest to guess, and that's of them not being as tall or broad as a femroe. With the actual artwork of the queen, at least one or some of their faces shouldn't have as defined animalistic features either. However, I would say their faces are the thing that is the most up in air. Even if one face had less defined anamilistic features, that isn't to say others would as well, as male hrothgar have quite a varying degree of faces themselves.

[reivaxe]

The last communication re: fem Hrothgar I recall from Yoshi-P was him saying they were having trouble developing a she-Hroth they liked the look of. So there is a slight possibility that, should any of the ideas floated in this thread get to the developers, it might help them break out of whatever design rut they are in.

(The above represents what's sometimes called "industrial-grade hopium." )

Just to clarify, he didn't say they were having trouble. He said that the month before that live stream or something was when they decided on 2 designs for Hrothgals. He didn't go into detail, this could mean that they nailed down 2 of the 4 faces for Hrothgals for all we know, or the very unlikely case of "we decided to pull a Middie/ Highlander" and make 2 actual models for them. Designing these things is a process, not everything gets a green light at the same time. IIRC the Ronso Face and Face 2 were the first 2 to get the ok and acted as the bases for Face 3 and 1. (The race starts from Ronso and Face 2 was their first time making something fresh/ new from that)

Debating on how bestial they should be, popularity, etc. has kind of always been discussed in the female hrothgar thread like this. It's why I was saying last time I didn't have the energy.

Very animalistic would get in the way, it's more of how pronounced those features can be without becoming problematic for hairstyle implementation. Most hairstyles need tweaking even on female viera, but they can prevent the amount of it needed, and still look good, if they plan in advance. Unlike with male hrothgar, which I can take a guess that they had zero plans to add the shared hairs to, which has had repercussions on the implementation of these hairs.

We should always be striving for quality.

With female hrothgar we can take some educated guesses on how they might look like due to the mosaic, which directly compares them to a roe, and the artwork of an actual hrothgar queen. I'd say they have a general idea of what they will look like. Their body type is probably the easiest to guess, and that's of them not being as tall or broad as a femroe. With the actual artwork of the queen, at least one or some of their faces shouldn't have as defined animalistic features either. However, I would say their faces are the thing that is the most up in air. Even if one face had less defined anamilistic features, that isn't to say others would as well, as male hrothgar have quite a varying degree of faces themselves.

Pretty much. It's important to remember context to things.

YP once said that when he decided to make Hrothgar and the artist designing them asked him "what are we gonna do about hair?" his reply was "Dont worry about it! They're gonna have fully unique heads! Don't worry about making hair fit!". Now, years later, things are different. They know they fucked up hard and even had to get told by the community to put the ears back after taking them away to make these shared hairs look less trash. That's pretty telling, to me at least.

[CidHeiral]

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...

That sounds awesome.

[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.

[Pip_Chick]

This line of logic always leads to...

This is incredibly disingenuous. I never even mentioned Dulia-Chai in any of my posts. How do you even get to this conclusion? I said I would like them to fit the warrior archetype and gave some examples like Wonder Woman, The female Hun warrior, Valkyrie, etc. And you get to the conclusion that I want Dulia-Chai with Cat head-on (XD)? And then you go on a rant about Au'Ra, don't know why, I never said anything about Au'Ra, but you do you.

Let me reiterate my points for you since you conveniently skipped them:
- Mithra are the Miquo'te of FFXI. They wouldn't make sense as Female Hrothgar.
- Just slapping a different fur texture on a Mithra would be a lazy design.
- I don't consider Lopporits to be a good analogy since they have flat faces.
- Hrothgar and Viera are now gaining players due to the hair restrictions being slowly lifted. This means they managed to find a way to make shared hair work on them and just have to perfect it.
- YP said that the reason Hrothgar was created was to bring some new and different people into the game. It is for the long-term health of the game. And that is why they shouldn't be concerned with what is popular with the existing community of players cause they already have a lot of options to choose from. While the people who want to play as a beast race have none.
- Hrothgar are a beast race. They will not be as popular as other races like Miquo'te and Au'Ra, because of the current fanbase who prefers small and cute. That is just a reality, you going into more medieval-inspired games and point out at them means nothing cause those attract a more western audience, while FFXIV is more eastern inspired.

Nothing that I said was political, don't know why you went that way. Your whole post didn't even tackle what I said you just put words in my mouth and went on a rant about Au'Ra. The Demon girl concept is popular. The concept art for Au'Ra was liked and the only thing that held them back from adding them was the limitation of the system. I mean look for yourself, the scale and horn textures are on the face texture when normally it would be 3 different texture maps (1 for each). The system did not allow for that, not to say about the digitigrades feet and claw hands. This could become a non-issue, but that would need an engine revamp, which is not very likely to happen in the near future.

And the bull image is not of a big guy and stocky woman, more of a pedo bait, with a big full-grown man and a child with massive boobs. I ain't touching that with a 10 ft pole!
And for the picture you showed of the big guy and small woman, that is an exception rather than the rule XD. Or do you really think that all women are as tall as a guy's belly button? If yes, I recommend going outside.

I will stop responding from here, this little banter is not worth it. I will wait and see until they come out or we get some more news on them.

[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.

[RyuDragnier]

Endgame is the metric we should be using, as it means it's a look at the players who stayed long enough to hit endgame. All characters include characters that were dropped and never played again, which can skew things.