Female Hrothgar as a playable race. Show your support!

[Iscah]

I started playing after HW dropped, so I only discovered this later. We were robbed.

You still have to look at the context. They didn't start out with that as their concept art and then turn into cutesy near-humans in the game; the demonic concept art is one outlier in a concept art collection that mostly resembles what we got in the end.

[Pip_Chick]

You know, I was thinking. Don't the female Hrothgar legs, look an awful lot like the old concept art for female Au'Ra? Like is it just me? Cause they look to be quite big and thiCC.
Could it be that they heard us complaining and just gave the old Au'Ra design a female Hrothgar makeover? It would be extremely smart from them if so. I don't know, I guess we will find out either on Saturday or in January.

[GTK0HLK]

You know, I was thinking. Don't the female Hrothgar legs, look an awful lot like the old concept art for female Au'Ra? Like is it just me? Cause they look to be quite big and thiCC.
Could it be that they heard us complaining and just gave the old Au'Ra design a female Hrothgar makeover? It would be extremely smart from them if so. I don't know, I guess we will find out either on Saturday or in January.

Wouldn't be surprised if they flipped some of their old ideas that were too out of place for what they chose for Au Ra('s Multiple Concepts)
[if for some reason XIV is able to overcome many foundational restraints in the next 2-4 yrs. If there ever was to be another. I wouldn't doubt that the potential for it to go much harder in some abstract ideas for a race, is much higher.]
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Decided to catch up after being away, so may as well also reply here to previous reply.

Yeah, reminds me of the idea that was brought up.(which alongside more varieties of Hempen Glamour.) A Secondary Set of Racial Glamour for the new Arc would be nice.(they may as well add more Race Un/Locked "Hempen Sets" while at it, some more variety don't hurt at all.)
[Though, an idea/version I had in mind. Was for it to be Sold only by a vendor at, or headed to the new world. (Aka in Tural and/or Vendor Unlock at 6.55-7.0 in Old Sharlayan) and it being untradeable to maintain specialty. but I'm getting way out of topic for the Thread.]

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I'll refrain personally on looking too much at the animations. Since the Placeholder-ish Lower Body has me fully intent on waiting til SE gives us full on Reveal. (While I won't suffer much from any gear grinding changes that can still occur. I'd rather not put too much fuel to hype fires than already is.)

But glad to see that they did enough to fit it, into the game. Bare Minimum.

Which comes to question.
Will they bother to make a Low Poly Placeholder? (Seeing the Outfit that was actually present. it will not be Yugiri Level of Cloaking/Hiding) Seeing how they kinda kept Eden References subtle, til right at the end.
Will our Highly Likely Rothgal Guest, be off to the corner come the end of the .X Series, or will we actually see her.
aka, at most we will see just feature less extremities, or nothing at all on screen.

A How do you think they'll present our new Guest kind of question?

[Putting aside whether or not they reveal Rothgals During EU, or Later(if we must March farther still..,)in JP.]

[Nureus]

Which comes to question.
Will they bother to make a Low Poly Placeholder? (Seeing the Outfit that was actually present. it will not be Yugiri Level of Cloaking/Hiding) Seeing how they kinda kept Eden References subtle, til right at the end.
Will our Highly Likely Rothgal Guest, be off to the corner come the end of the .X Series, or will we actually see her.
aka, at most we will see just feature less extremities, or nothing at all on screen.

A How do you think they'll present our new Guest kind of question?

I can tell you right off the bat that they aren't remodeling the character models which means that they aren't changing the poly count. What they are doing is changing the texture and other maps on the character models. The reason why I say this is because there is no change to the base structure of the character as you can see from the example I posted below.



Now you might be thinking the bumps and wrinkles on the updated face means that the base model has been changed but I can tell you that is more than likely done with either a Normal Map or Displacement Map for the texture which gives the illusion of depth with out actually changing the model itself. Now this isn't as simple as I'm making it sound and due to the changes does cause rendering times to increase due to the computer doing the math behind the scenes which is why they are increasing the base specs for PCs. Now if you want an example of a model change then look at original WoW characters to the change in WoD expansion. That is a Character model change which would take much longer to implement and we probably would see the characters done in stages rather than all at once due to how much more work it takes to remodel a character rather than re-texture and map an existing one.

So to answer the question, I think they have defenetly put the budget in to add a lower texture map for our new NPC mostly because it is only one character and it is very easy to re-plug in the new values for the new maps once the expansion comes out. So we will definitely get to see and interact with her when 6.55 comes out mid January.

[ejunniim]

I'm feeling pretty good about what we're seeing so far.

And I agree with it!
I would like not to jump to conclusions and keep a little patience, but encouraged by the fact that the form is really closer to the roe and highlanders; definitely tall and, as far as i can see, strong. Not as muscular as men, but definitely gives me the feeling of Karmaho's art. Besides, now I'm about 8/10 sure that the voice saying "My home, Tural" belongs to the hroth lady!

[CidHeiral]

I can tell you right off the bat that they aren't remodeling the character models which means that they aren't changing the poly count.

This is incorrect.

Take the Hyur model as an example. You can clearly see the ear has gone from a flat texture on a very blocky model to a fully modeled ear with depth. You can also see the more angular areas around the jawline, eyes, etc. have been smoothed out.




It's not the obvious quantum leap that the original WoW remodels were because it's not starting from the same stone age place that they were.





It's closer to the remodels of Worgen and Goblins. Their models were already pretty good so the difference is much more subtle, which is the case with FFXIV as well.





I do think the difference will be a little more obvious once we see the full models. Aim down the length of your character's fingers and limbs and you'll see they are extremely blocky, the fingers for example are literally squares. I assume that will no longer be the case with the update.

Side note: I'm salty we'll never get anything like Worgen.

[GTK0HLK]

I can tell you right off the bat that they aren't remodeling the character models which means that they aren't changing the poly count. What they are doing is changing the texture and other maps on the character models. The reason why I say this is because there is no change to the base structure of the character as you can see from the example I posted below.

Only Meant Low Poly in the sense that the Graphical Changes will be enough of a change that, they are potentially/likely not going to make a Current Graphics Version Fully Useable.
Which The Lower Half of a Body Kinda gives a strong push to agreed in the scale.

Regardless though, they have showed quite abit during the run up to even the first FanFests.

But the overall message I meant to give was overall, Hopefully understood by most.

Which, unless I say exactly it is, instead of using it in general. (Since you can argue only the lower half of a body Placeholder Is in fact lower Poly than a full body. lol)

Sorry for the misunderstanding causing a "Let Me Explain You" Reaction.
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so I'll just leave the question without any build up.

Do you all think they'll keep hiding the Rothgal til 7.0?
(Speaking of ingame/benchmark models)
Or would they make, yet another placeholder that won't ever be in the players hands?
(Highly Doubt, which like my Yugiri Example, doesn't seem like the New World Attire of there's does much to Hide them. Unless they'll be with a obscenely large Mask over their Head and body.)

There isn't much reason to show them in-game. (more so if the finished product will release months after patch day. Or when the Benchmark Drops.)

Even so, will be quite a thing when the do announce it in a Fanfest.

(I feel like, they'd keep playing Hide the Rothgal.
But if it's absolutely necessary to show them in a MSQ Quest, then we'll see them. if not, it'll have less screentime/screenspace.)

[ForsakenRoe]

Do you all think they'll keep hiding the Rothgal til 7.0?
(Speaking of ingame/benchmark models)
Or would they make, yet another placeholder that won't ever be in the players hands?

They have to let us make them with the benchmark, so people can frame-1 fantasia to the new race when DT launches with a pre-designed saved character creator dataset. Leaving it out of the benchmark would only be a thing they'd do if they're not playable at all

I just don't see what sense it'd really make to delay the announcement to the 3rd fanfest, but I guess we'll see in about 36 hours

[TheMightyMollusk]

The only reason to delay would be if, for some reason, they want to unveil the model in 6.55 first via the new NPC. Seems like a weird thing to do, but you never know.

[Nureus]

This is incorrect.

Actually what you pointed out can also be corrected and done with maps instead of remodeling the whole character. As a company you really don't want to remodel if you don't have to because of how time intensive it is especially since it can mess up the whole pipeline, especially with an ongoing game like XIV, since if we take the worst case scenario they would have to remodel, re-texture, re-map, re-rig, re-weight, re-code, and possibly re-animate the 15 characters. And that is just the base character not everything that the character interacts with such as weapons and armor. Eventually it becomes a big old messy can of worms.

In addition to this they have to keep the models usable on platforms like PS4 which might not be able to handle a higher poly count player models in areas with massive player congestion. They also don't want to run into the 1.0 issues again where poly counts were way to high for an MMO. Now the reason I can say this fairly confidently is because I work on this kind of stuff as a Technical Artist so I do know a thing or two about this.

Now maybe when they choose to drop PS4, update PC specs again, and with a possible engine update we'll see a remodeled character update. As for now it's just not time efficient or completely necessary since the there isn't a huge discrepancy between newer races and the originals.

Do you all think they'll keep hiding the Rothgal til 7.0?
(Speaking of ingame/benchmark models)
Or would they make, yet another placeholder that won't ever be in the players hands?
(Highly Doubt, which like my Yugiri Example, doesn't seem like the New World Attire of there's does much to Hide them. Unless they'll be with a obscenely large Mask over their Head and body.)

I'm at least 95% sure that we'll interact with the full 6.55 version of her in 6.55. My reason behind this is because we see part of her in 6.5 which if she wasn't going to show up till 7.0 they would of just had Erenville come back with a message that the Hrothgal is coming rather than having her actually come with the patch since this would keep spoilers out of our hands. Additionally I'm sure she is going to be like Erenville and you can recreate her with character creation and not be a unique model like Matoya since again this would save on asset creation.

Also not a problem I was just trying to correct a miss understanding of what is going on as someone who works with this kind of stuff I just wanted to give a better explanation of what is going on behind the scenes, though not a 100% accurate version since I don't work for SE.

Now that I've derailed the forum again time to get back on track. Hoping we see a Hrothgal reveal in a couple of days. We could consider it an early Christmas present from Yoshi-P if they do If not I guess I'll be fine with a later reveal at JP in 2 1/2 months give or take.