Future Races for FFXIV

[heheesyo]

Why is everyone so gung ho for viera? Half of our player base is already human/fuzzy animal hybrids which is already ridiculous. Give us viera then it'll just be a joke. We need something that isn't a humanoid with fuzzy ears.

[Gwaeron]

Why is everyone so gung ho for viera? Half of our player base is already human/fuzzy animal hybrids which is already ridiculous. Give us viera then it'll just be a joke. We need something that isn't a humanoid with fuzzy ears.

I'm guessing people are just kind of expecting it because of Q2 of the fourth player poll, http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/46936 (Why people voted like they did... no idea, maybe the other options were too boring for a lot of people?)

The mammalian demi-beastman category would probably get much fewer votes if he hadn't used viera as an example race...

[Roda]

That tail and those feet remind me of Blade and Soul's Lyn.

[Demetirus]

I guess I'm just the only person who gets bored seeing the same races and the same monsters over and over again. :/ Would just like to see something new. Why pull in races from other planets when we have two whole other continents on Hydaelyn to mess around with?

I'm not opposed to something entirely new to Eorzea at all, but where this something is undefined, it's hard to say if I'd back it or not. With the Viera, they're something I know and can therefore confidently back.

Why is everyone so gung ho for viera? Half of our player base is already human/fuzzy animal hybrids which is already ridiculous. Give us viera then it'll just be a joke. We need something that isn't a humanoid with fuzzy ears.

To be honest, I'm a miqo'te because I was informed that I would be by my gf. If Viera had have been the option at the beginning, I would have opted for that over the cat folks (mostly because I loved Fran). I guess the crux of it for me is that I would be playing one of the fuzzy eared folks one way or another, either by being told or by choice.

Amusingly I was an Elvaan back in FFXI and swore that they were the only race for me. They almost were again in XIV, but well... I'm a sucker for my gf's pouty face. :P

[heheesyo]

Snip

I feel ya. I understand the appeal and all. I started out male miqote and I actually loved the character model except for one tiny thing that bugged me soo bad: That freaking weird rigor mortis position their right hands are stuck in. Maybe se was going for a paw type position, but it just looks weird to me. Especially since it\\'s only the one hand. The rest of their body is in a normal relaxed position except the one weird hand that is always clenched and contorted. Lol that and the sheer number of people that play miqote convinced me to use my fantasia to become the master race. ; P

I think there should be cross racess before any new races are introduced. There are already cross races in eorzea so it only makes sense lore wise.

I just wonder how many people would go viera as soon as they came out. This game is gonna start looking like a petting zoo. X.x

[Ildur]

While I'm not particularly against Viera aesthetically, I wouldn't want them around: we alredy have a race to tick the "human with animal features" checkbox. Thematically speaking, you will have two races being too similar to each other. It would be okay if the theme of Eorzea was "people with animal traits", but that isn't the case (as evidenced by every other race, which are also quite distinct from each other).

I'd prefer a playable beast-tribe to have some greater visual variety in characters. It's a bit hard to come with anything else, though, because all the archetypes are already covered by the vanilla races: Roes are the big, strong guys, Lalas are the cute department personified, Elezen are tall and slender, humans are basic and Miqo'te are the animal feature race.

Actually, scratch that. You know what we don't have? DWARVES. Like, proper dwarves with very long beards. And no, lalas don't count: they are more like gnomes rather than proper dwarves.

[Felis]

I'm for Chocolinas


Give the catgirls some birdgirls to play together ^^

[Demetirus]

I was with you until I saw that hat. It looks like a dead bird, or one of those rubber chickens.

[Tahldon]

I'd prefer a playable beast-tribe to have some greater visual variety in characters. It's a bit hard to come with anything else, though, because all the archetypes are already covered by the vanilla races: Roes are the big, strong guys, Lalas are the cute department personified, Elezen are tall and slender, humans are basic and Miqo'te are the animal feature race.

Lol. I wonder if I am the only person who thinks the game's races are fine as they are. If anything I would just like for more customization options (Hair, armor, etc.) for what we do have.

I'm pretty much of the mind that we've gotten a pretty good array of different races and traits, with the exception of beastial races, but those are covered by the beast tribes of which we cannot play. Either way, I'll continue to shake my head at the implementation of Viera. There isn't a whole lot that separates them from Miqo'te, visually -- it feels uninspired to me in the face of having a feline race with similar things.

[LineageRazor]

Lol. I wonder if I am the only person who thinks the game's races are fine as they are. If anything I would just like for more customization options (Hair, armor, etc.) for what we do have.

I'm more or less satisfied with the race choices - though I'll admit that I was a bit disappointed to learn that all five races were being recycled from FFXI. That said, if indeed new races ARE going to be added, it's fun to speculate as to what they will be.

It's also tricky to imagine just what they could do to make a new race that is distinct enough from the current races to be recognizably different while not looking completely inhuman. While it might be fun to play as beastmen, there's clearly a beastman/non-beastman divide in the storyline; even in the case of allied beasttribes, it is clear that it is still a case of "us and them", with all the five player races are lumped into "us". Even when NPCs in-game are prejudiced against other player races (such as the rivalry between Duskwight and Wildwood Elezen), never is it suggested that they are not part of "us", just that they are a very crappy part of "us".

Whether this beastman/non-beastmand divide is due to discrimination on both sides, or if there's something cosmologically fundamental involved (in FFXI, for instance, the player races were explicitly created by one of the two major gods, while the Beastmen were made by the other with the express intent of creating conflict), this divide does exist. If SE were to introduce a new, blatantly inhuman race, it'd be tough to explain why they are considered part of the collection of humans, rather than part of the colleciton of Beastmen.

That said, what more can they do to the "human" look that hasn't already been done? We've got little people. We've got big people. We've got willowy, pointy-ear people. We've got normal people, in both slender and stocky varieties. And, we've got people with animal bits. Making people with DIFFERENT animal bits is easy: add horns for Pad'jal, add dragon wings and tail for Gria, add deer/rabbit ears, graceful legs, and tail for Viera, etc. A new modification on the human archetype is tough to imagine, though, without coming up with something more creepy than endearing.