Au Ra physiology and other lore.

[Samcaesar]

Snip and sweet dreams!

From a certain point of view? I suppose. But in the grander scheme of things the gist of the Au Ra isn't too unique. Like.. The models to the girl Au Ra are incredibly similar to the Miqo'te. The men are fairly similar to Elezen, but I notice a whole lot more differences due to the shapely hips, shoulder width, height, outrageous hair options, large scale patches, and the way the chin crests help add mass and shape to the chins and face that I feel they're at least more unique, those things are notably lacking on girl Au Ra. Plus I feel that saying sexual dimorphism is the unique part of the Auri racial identity is downplaying the sexual dimorphism exhibited with the Roegadyn, another race with massive differences between men and women, the only difference is the heights are more closer together, but I feel that's heights kinda negligible by the fact that Roegadyn women bodies are literally half the thickness and width that the guys are. I just feel the Roegadyn at least shake it up a bit with the addition of a unique body shape for the women as well as the fact that the Roegadyn men are so massive, that even with the extreme levels of sexual dimorphism, the girls are still as large as any other race, so you'll see little complaints from me directed towards there.

I still do agree with you in that it's plausible, though I feel sex-linked should be more aptly described testosterone-linked, but I feel that even when given the option to make the women larger through things outside of just sex-linked genetics SE decided to not do it. It's not that the women of the Olkund were still comparatively short to the men of the Olkund, they were just average height in general, I find it completely bizarre that SE makes it so that the women of a humanoid race are so concrete in their height that even through selective breeding they couldn't even get any larger. After all there is more than just sex-linked genetics behind the height of any species. On a side note, I find it weird that the max Auri men can go to are 7'3, while the Olkund would be over 7'5 inches, I wonder why SE didn't make the height slider go higher with regards to that tribe.

It's more the motif of the warrior (Which the Xaela tribes generally give off) and all that the motif entails (Large size, more animal like features, aggressive appearance), like I understand that anyone can be a warrior and have immense success in battle, but it's such a tiring trope whenever the guys have a clear connection to the motif of "warrior" that's lacking on the women of that race entirely. Sure they're mentions of the men being househusbands and the amazon warrior tribe, but do you honestly look at them and get that feeling from their appearance? I know there's the whole "Actions speak louder than words (Or visuals in this scenario)" would say "My Lalafell DRK can wreck dragons and everything with a bad of their wrists! Your points are moot!" But to that I say, when you think "Warrior race" do you think the Miqo'te or the Amalj'aa fit better with that direction in terms of design? As a slightly related example, consider the Disney movie Mulan! The main enemies of the Chinese and Mulan were massive, but funnily enough, they were also the mongols, historically short (And stout) people. Why did Disney change this? Because they know the audience would look at the struggles of Mulan and the Chinese forces as much less severe if the enemy didn't fit the motif of pillaging destroying warrior. Likewise, it's neither unnatural nor unreasonable for one to come to the conclusion that things like the Dazkar or Borlaaq were more so added on haphazardly because they don't fit with the motif of the Au Ra. Why would there be a tribe full of warrior women when Auri women were designed to look as nadeshiko as possible? You could come to the conclusion and say "Well SE wanted to deviate a little from the trope which is good!", but it feels more like they were trying to cover their rears whenever they realized that the look of Auri women doesn't fit in with the motif of the Xaela so they have to make "exceptions" to prove that they weren't just making the race to pander to a certain demographic and keep discussions like these from occurring. It's just a tiredness of the tired reused trope of " Race with Small(er), cute(r) women and big(ger), scary(ier) men". If SE wanted to make sexual dimorphism the motif of the race, it could've been implemented in more unique ways, my personal favorite is the reverse of the stereotypical and making the men waifish while the women are strong and threatening.

Why field any men if they can just be outmatched with women archers? It's because SE (And anyone doing fantasy to be honest and fair) is more concerned with motifs than they are with perfect sense, which is fine, it's a fantasy game where shields (magic or otherwise) protect swordsmen til they get up close and cleave whatever archer in half because archers never carry melee weapons in fantasy. They've even implemented this whole idea of being liberal with regards to fantasy into the lore of the Au Ra with the Olkund purposely trying to make their tribe's members' as large as possible, but SE decided to take the lazy route of going with a "But for whatever reason (Be it genetics or just the unwillingness to make the Auri women tall) women remain at average height". Could they have made their a few exceptions to the whole "Small cute girls, big mean-looking men"? Absolutely, and I'd argue it'd be the best to allow this, because ultimately that's the only way SE could've killed any of this by allowing a few exceptions and allow players to fill in the gaps lore wise. As an example, make it so that the Auri women are generally small, but make it so that the height slider goes up to 7', that way the player can go "Oh well, my Au Ra comes from a tribe where they spent centuries making the women as tough as men through magic herbs and whatnot!", which isn't unheard of as the lore for the Xaela has the whole Tribes forgotten/hidden away allowing for that freedom to occur. Of course the response to the whole "Well it's fantasy so SE can make the girls warriors small and petite and it not matter because it's fantasy too!" but there's a certain skeevy-ness to that sorta logic that I'd hope SE would stray away from, particularly in that it really relies on the same sort of logic and rhetoric to justify sexy armor for women and the whole "Strong Female Characters" trope (Look up Kate Beaton's Strong Female Characters for examples of the issues with this trope presented in a funny way!).

The point with not accepting it is maybe SE will hopefully realize relying on tired reused tropes are annoying at least some fans, and either make additions so we can at least make the individual character seem unique (Say with the Au Ra, give the Xaela more neutral emotes and give them the option to be taller) or make the next race something less samey in terms of fantasy tropes. Also I'm a little bitter because this will probably be the only thing close to a reptilian race (Whether or not they're actually demonic or reptilian is irrelevant because I'm sure SE feels like they hit that "Demibeast race with scales" demographic) we've got and I'm massively disappointed with on the visuals of the girls. Like.. Would the same logic of just accepting it due to the way things go work for anything else in the game? RMT, dungeon mechanics, 1.0 to 2.0, jobs that are too weak or not strong enough, et cetera. SE has proven that they listen to fans in some regards (Heck, actually being able to look at Titan Egi hold aggro in dungeons with full parties makes me so happy), so I could only hope that in 3.1(Or whenever) that they'd add the addition to make it so I could crank up the height or change the horns without changing the face with the Au Ra (Another suggestion that I've seen pretty popular that SE hasn't commented on yet >.> )

Anyways, night Cilia! Enjoy your dark knighting, I've really enjoyed the story so far, and I hope you do too. Gonna head to bed myself, got school and work then busy times saving the realm later!

[Leviathonlx]

Stuff

That reminds me of that quote last week where they mentioned how the Au Ra were a beast race more so than a Miqo'te since you could just remove the 'tail and ears and have a human'. It's strange to me since the same exact thing can be said about the Au Ra when it comes to removing the tail and horns since a fancy scale effect does not make a beast race. My idea of a real beast race is something akin to the charr, worgen, and tauren and a fancy scale effect that's mostly covered by armor does not make one. At the very least the Au Ra should have had differing eyes and actual claws (hell the Miqo'te at least get the eye thing with the one clan while the only difference for Au Ra seems to be scale color).

[Cilia]

[Wall of Text]

Wow, how many times was the word "trope" used here?

... only 7? Disappointed in you!

Anyway, I think the main thing to keep in mind is that the Au Ra were almost clearly designed with the Raen in mind over the Xaela. +90% positive this is the case; just look at the effort that went into explaining the Raen names vs. the Xaela "use a period Mongolian name and a tribe with a quirky custom." Considering this and the strict gender roles of Japanese society (even in modern times, to a lesser degree) it's not surprising at all the men are big and tough and the women are small, prim, and proper.

Ironic, then, that I've seen more Xaela PCs on my server...

Regardless, while there might be tribes and individuals that fall outside of these boundaries, there is only room for so much variety in the character creator. What we're allowed to create falls within the boundaries of "average" members of the race. There are individuals who fall outside of these boundaries (all of the GC leaders have unique models, for example, and Yugiri has a unique face and horn coloration), but PCs are just that - average.

You keep saying "well, they should make a race of big tough women and smaller men," but if they did that they'd get just as many complaints (if not more). All the boys who play the game as a power fantasy would be up in arms saying stuff like "It doesn't make sense for the women to be big and tough while the men look like scrawny geeks because raisins!" etc etc. No matter what they do everybody isn't going to be happy, so they did the best the could with what they had - unfortunately, this meant making the "tougher" of the two tribes identical to the "gentle" tribe in every way save horn / scale coloration. Since the Raen were clearly the more focused-on of the tribes, and the Raen are part of Hydaelyn!Japanese society...

Could they have differentiated the clans a la Midlanders and Highlanders? Absolutely. Should they have? Probably. There are reasons as to why they didn't, the chiefest likely being they didn't have the time and resources to devote to it with everything else going on. They can't add in special options because then they'd have to add in special options for EVERY race - people would complain they want to play a Lalafell with gigantism, or a Roegadyn with dwarfism, etc. The only options in that case would be to either A) put the time and resources into making those situations work or B) tell people the Au Ra got special treatment and piss them off. Asking for something like that because "well, my Au Ra is from a highly secretive clan with super-tall women" is asking for special snowflake treatment.

Yeah, the Huge Guy, Tiny Girl Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism is overdone and cliché, but that's because it works for good or ill. Ultimately your complaints boil down to "I wanted to play a big, tough dragon lady (not that kind of dragon lady), and female Au Ra don't let me do that," which fair enough, but they aren't exactly what I wanted either. Still, they can't please everyone, and I'm willing to accept what we got. RMT and class balance are another thing entirely - they can be an active detriment to your performance, while the appearance of your character is purely aesthetic (aside from a few starting stat points that end up being negligible by endgame).

Having fun with DRK, but I do want to get on with the story. 4 levels to go. At least I haven't had any bad experiences aside from this one Stone Vigil run with a cocky overgeared BLM who wordlessly decided he was calling the shots because he's overgeared. Feel kind of bad for leaving Alphinaud standing out in the bitter cold though. (Not really, serves him right for leaving his damn coat at the manor! ... but Tataru...)

[Samcaesar]

Snippers!

It was pretty late and I needed to sleep, though I had a pretty simple final in the morning so yay for me.


Eh, then I fail to see how it's not the fault of SE then, something they should take a few extra steps to not seem lazy. Like.. Sure it's fine for the Raen, but diversifying it's boring whenever the they go and base an entire race on idealized gender roles version (Though I'd say the big, scary, and tough = the stereotypical gender role for men in Japan is questionable) of one culture, while the Xaela have very little if at all to do with Japan nor its gender roles. As a side note, I dunno, I feel while they might have more unique names, their culture is just "feudal Japanese culture with a twist" nothing overtly unique about them unlike the 51 listed tribes for the Xaela, even if they are gimmicky. Plus it's kinda a big flubup on SE's part to make the Xaela closer to the original Au Ra culture, but go with more Japanese ideals for the looks. I also find it a little sad that the Midlanders from Doma hardly look any different than the ones from Eorzea, like.. Highlanders and Midlanders look different and yet the one from a different continent look just the same as Midlanders!

Honestly, I attribute that to the fact that the black scales. They just help make the Au Ra look a little bit more unique. Otherwise the white scales kinda make

Oh of course they would get tons of complaints, except that if they want that, well they actually have options. There is yet a race where the women are tough and the men are small, even with the race with the massive women, the men are yet larger. I feel you're letting them off easy, there is a lot of talk of maybe they lacked time or resources, but really I'd prefer a more unique race if it meant that it wasn't available at launch, akin to a the summoner glamours. Sure it'd look bad ("Whaaat the race that was promoted isn't avaliable right away?!") but it people didn't see the benefits of holding it back for a while, then they aren't looking at the bigger picture. Hell, let the Raen be available at start, come out with a "We had limited time during the development, but we promise the Xaela will be available as soon as we can pump them out(Insert shiny picture showing off uniquely designed Xaela)" Like.. There would still be some complaining, but more parties would be suited.

The issue with that is we know they've at least had an idea for the Raen women solidified for a while (Yugiri was introduced in 2.2), I wish what would've been the case is that SE just dropped the charade and showed us the new race much earlier on so they could've gotten an opinion on where to go with it, like say focus resources on adding more variation between the clans or something. I doubt making it so that the height had a larger range would be that resource intensive as well, considering a little while back you could use a glitch to make your PC much larger (Both clientside and visible to other players) with little issue. Isn't the whole "Piss off" the case with this sort of scenario? "Sorry, your demographic didn't get pandered to, it's not a big deal." Sure, they're going to end up disappointing someone, so the might as well work their best to try and make that as little of "Someones" as possible, and lets be frank, less people would be complaining if they just dropped the whole "tiny woman big guy" thing, or at least made it so the height range for the Au Ra worked to allow some variation. Even if they wanted to keep the "Tiny woman big guy" theme that badly, just make it so its "unusual/rare" for a Auri women to be as tall as the men. Plus I don't think we've got any reason to call "special snowflake" treatment when that's all the Xaela are, a bunch of gimmick tribes that SE even goes out and says "Of course there are some tribes unseen/hidden" to allow players to do "Special snowflake" things outfit of the 51 other "special snowflake" options. Heck they even made an option for you to have Japanese named Xaela/Mongolian named Raen with that one tribe that takes Raen or the other tribe that is fine with outsiders.

Just because it works doesn't mean it ought to be what SE does, I mean otherwise we get the nth variation of Big guy tiny girl because well, it works. You're not wrong, the main part of the complaint does boil down to my personal preference not necessarily being available, but imho it doesn't spell well for any future playable races whenever the first new race (Outside of Miqo'te men and Roegadyn and Highlander women) are so heavily reliant on a very overused trait. Like.. SE even had their reasoning for the Auri women's stature and appearance "More people play Miqo'te and Midlander so they look similar" and while one could argue that the male Au Ra are suppose to add variation so they're not just carbon copies, it just feels like they could've done more, like this is a race they've been planning and working on since 2.2, probably a bit before. Aesthetics are still pretty important however, I mean why bother adding a new race if they weren't. Plus it's pretty subjective over what matters more, I mean, I don't really care if WHM is OP or about RMT, while as a roleplayer I love doing a hundred different things to my character's appearance, heck the character creator is one of my favorite things about this game.

DRK seems fun, I might eventually dip into it, shame that the darkstance aura is an eye sore. Eeeh don't worry he seems to like it, but he could've dressed more warmly!

Don't worry, I'm much more vexed by people saying stuff like "Au'ra." It's "Au Ra," two words. Not rocket surgery guys!

(As an aside, I was going for a more Mediterranean skin tone. Does anyone think I went too dark? Might need another Fantasia, but damn if I'mma spend $10 just to fix that...)

I think you look fine! Though the lightening hair looks strange.