Quote Originally Posted by Tahldon View Post
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.