Au Ra Character Creation Feedback

[Bluevann]

All right, here's my feedback to what I think of Au Ra after checking the benchmark.


Overall rate: 6.9/10

My major peeve is that the difference between the two clans are pretty abysmal, so I will split my list of opinions on gender rather than on clan…

General:
- I am HIGHLY disappointed that faces and horns are tied together, with only four options at that, and absolutely no sliders whatsoever for horns.
- I think scales should have been given a colour pallette, even a small one, with dark shades for the Xaela and light shades for the Raen.
- I like that tails have different shapes, but I am horribly disappointed that we cannot change their colour.
- Some hairstyles seem to give extra horns. It's something that bugs me because we can change hairstyle in-game. How are we going to explain the appearance/disappearance of new horns on our heads? It would've been better to put them into a separate Horns category along with the ear-horns, so that we can choose in which hairstyle we want them to sprout or not. The difference in colors from the ear-horns is also off-putting.
- The limbal rings are very interesting. Happy they don't have odd-colouring. Four-color eyes would've been too much.
- The "special features" (renamed 'scales' for Au Ra, even though it includes eyeliners…) category is again dependant on what face you select. It's something I was never fond of even with the previous races.
- I really like their emotes. They are a lot more tranquil and serious, something we really needed after the overly vivacious spree most of races (I think, except Elezen) displayed in 2.0. Great fodder for serious/gloomy characters.

Females:
- Love the shortness.
- Their dance emote is very sweet and elegant, it reflects them awesomely.
- Their voices are mostly atrocious. They can't laugh, and their /no's are too vocal. Their /angry is scary <_< some make me think of harpies.
- Their hairstyles are elaborated and interesting, though they all seem quite "fancy" and not quite how I'd do my hair for everyday activity.

Males:
- Their hairstyles are all freaking amazing. Perhaps too amazing, to the point the older hairstyles all look kind of "meh" on them, wasted.
- Their voices are all very awesome.
- Their dance….. what is that….?
- Their idle stance is awful.
- Their tails are a bit shorter in comparison to female's proportions. Myeh.

[Mahri]

This is good feedback. Thanks for posting this.

The biggest negative for Au Ra I'm feeling is that scale patterns have no color choices. Au Ra have an incredible skin color palette to choose from. Like, better than any existing races, seriously. That makes the lack of scale color options hurt even worse!

Second is the fact that scale pattern and horns are tied to faces, but that's way more forgivable considering that you're probably working with engine limitations.

With regards to the Benchmark: Please, please, please give us the option to test this using the extra hairstyles and face paint options we have in-game, like the Gold Saucer hair, Lightning, etc. It really sucks trying to nail down a look but, with the exception of the very newest hairstyles, have no extra hair options, and only the 2.0 baseline face paint options!

[Cyrus-Wallace]

The biggest negative for Au Ra I'm feeling is that scale patterns have no color choices.

I found myself shocked with this too. It kinda forces me to use certain colour combinations and future gear glamour that shouldn't clash with the scales' colours. I've noticed, though, that certain skin tones tend to slightly modify these scales. However, I want a separate palette for these. Can we address this, pretty please, SE?

[Eldelphia]

Really, really disappointed that the Au Ra women are still so freaking short. I thought they would be but when SE said that there were more options I was really hoping that they would be able to be taller than those in the promotional material. The males look amazing but I won't be playing a female Au Ra (even though I love the concept) because they're tiny. I wanted a badass female Au Ra - not another simpering, girly character.

Very disappointed

[BreathlessTao]

...may we contribute with our own? Please? o.o I've wanted to do such a thread myself but you beat me to it. ^^

Edit: alright, so....

With Au Ra introduced, I get the clan separation less and less. Yes, there's lore, but its in-game importance is somewhere between zero and none. And while so far at least the skin colours seemed to stick to a certain level of separate colour ranges, what the Au Ra (especiall Raen) have is just so random it really confuses me as to why it even exists? Some decorative elements are split, some with quite obvious differences - so much so that it's just weird, for two clans of the same race to differ that much. Oh and by the way, the tails? They gave me the impression of "worm", rather than "dragon".

What I was not surprised to see was different horns being locked to different faces. This game just has a knack for unnecessary restrictions way too much, and it's really quite disappointing. Why on earth do the most prominent, primary feature of an entire race has to be so limited? It's pretty much "ugly face with awesome horns" or "handsome face with boring horns", for many (if not most) players, I'm sure. It's really sad. The fact that every individual of a given race has the exact same body shape makes us look way too similar anyway, but doing this adds even more to that "clone army" feeling. No idea why SE continues to do this ("saving bandwidth", I assume~), but they really should stop.

Then there come the features that shouldn't be race-locked at all. Limbal rings? "Scales" that are nothing but over-intensified eyeliners? Why? What's the justification? Creating features for the sole reason of all the races to have an equal number of customisation options (not even sure if that's the case) - that is just silly, because it leads to such arbitrary things. Some have more features to their appearance than others, end of story. It doesn't mean general ones should be race-locked. As for the hairstyles?

Their hairstyles are all freaking amazing. Perhaps too amazing, to the point the older hairstyles all look kind of "meh" on them, wasted.

^ That bit there. I'd say they make the older hairstyles all look kind of wasted, in general. High ponytail? Overblown "spikes"? Give me those any day over the measly two (TWO!) that Heavensward brings for others that couldn't look more boring.

As far as the graphics go... I absolutely love, love, love the new contrast levels. Certainly hope it's a general DX11 thing that'll apply for ARR parts as well, because it's much better than what we have now. Also love having DoF, I know it's not to everyone's liking, but personally I've really been missing it. And the body animations? Not sure if at all possible, but I believe they look even better than before - seriously, try the skimpy cascadier uniform and watch how awesome your character's movements are.

What I still do not like though is the overall SILENCE. Especially disturbing in that scene where they land at the beast tribe (I think?) - it's obvious everyone's chatting, yet we only hear one very jarring female laughter. I mean, could we at least have some "general crowd" noises, please? It's bad enough that our own character doesn't even know a few general phrases (despite so many voice options), but when there are crowds around us and all we hear is the music... meh.



PS: You thought the Elezen were giraffes, and called them that - well, Au Ra male's default (50%) height is just above the Elezen's max (209.x cm vs 210 cm). Just a small bit of info to enjoy.

[Mahri]

...may we contribute with our own? Please? o.o I've wanted to do such a thread myself but you beat me to it. ^^

Yes, yes, yes! Get discussion going. Make this thread grow. Make 'em notice.

[Kuroyasha]

PS: You thought the Elezen were giraffes, and called them that - well, Au Ra male's default (50%) height is just above the Elezen's max (209.x cm vs 210 cm). Just a small bit of info to enjoy.

Wow they are really that tall?! Guess I'll just write it off to being dragonborn. FUS RO DAH

The real question is; When I pick the kid gohan hairstyle, do i make it the color of super saiyan, super saiyan god, or super saiyan god super saiyan(why did Akira Toriyama call it that omg)?

[Dualblade]

Wow they are really that tall?! Guess I'll just write it off to being dragonborn. FUS RO DAH

The real question is; When I pick the kid gohan hairstyle, do i make it the color of super saiyan, super saiyan god, or super saiyan god super saiyan(why did Akira Toriyama call it that omg)?

I thought it was just Super Saiyan God? ANyways should go black with red highlights so you can call all the blue head ones fakers.

[ScarletDawn]

The female voices don't really fit their size and yes im going to stereotype tiny people have higher pitches. I mean look at lalafells always sounding like they puffed some helium.

[DracotheDragon]

with the faces and horns it tore me because i love the 4th female face but adore 1's sleeked back horns :c