Dear Devs, please bring the Male and Female Xaela Au-Ra closer to this artwork

[Izsha]

If they ever add another race I would love to see something more beastly looking with imposing females. Right now all the races are human or human with tacked on animal-y bits. For the record I do not dislike the current races, but something different would be nice. It's not like they haven't had beast races in Final Fantasy, sometimes they have even joined the party. Heck the FFXI Mithra and Galka had more beast-like features and were a step in the right direction.

So much this.

Miq females: human girl with cat ear headband.
Auri females: human girl with horn headband and painted scales.

They look like cospaplay girls. Human cosplay girls. If you have beast races, stop making them human girls playing dressup. Mithra and Galka were in such a better direction, but they striped them down so much in 14. Removed galka tails, removed peach fuzz from mithra, and redid their facial stricture to just be human. And don't get me started on all the stupid cutesy emotes and the salon hair. I'm a feral cat hybrid that runs around slaying voidsent and saving the world with my axe or lance. I don't want to look like I stepped out of a salon.

Stop making cosplay races and start making beast races.

[Kyandeisu]

You do realize that those artwork are just concept art. Concept art is normally done by more than one artist all working towards a design that will change bit by bit once it gets transferred into a 3D model. Just because they show the concept art on what you should generally expect, doesnt mean that it will be exactly what will be presented. Only artwork that would be presented that would be exactly what you should see in the final form is official promotional artwork not concept artwork as a preview which has been done in the live letters on occasion.
Concept art is pretty much, just gives you a general idea, not what EXACTLY will be the final form, its a work in progress and is considered the initial stepping stone in the development of the character/item/creature/building wutever is being depicted in the concept. As progress happens with the character through the pipeline of the development changes will me made, things will be removed, things will be added and so forth. (this isnt always the case, but the majority of the time it is.) Sometimes this cannot be helped, especially trying to throw in a new character in something thats already developed and does not have race specific equipment throughout the entire gameplay, but having shared equipment. In the concept art that was presented in this thread, the horns are clearly coming out of the top of the head, not the side of the head would be relevant to what the development team deals with on the long ears and cat ears. Imagine having to go in and edit all the helms in game to cater towards the different horns that shoot out from the top portion of the head. We probably would not even be getting the new race this early.

And I am not white-knighting here I am speaking from experience of doing concept art for character designs myself on private indie game developers and going through the schooling for it and all the crap gotta learn on this problem alone.

[Natsuno]

Imo, I think all the races in this game ARE humans or at least related somehow (that's why they look similar.) That's probably why they're called "Races," suggesting they are connected in some shape or form.

Well they can interbreed, so it's possible that they all share a common ancestor. (I know nothing on the lore btw, so apologies if I'm wrong)

[Dualblade]

Well they can interbreed, so it's possible that they all share a common ancestor. (I know nothing on the lore btw, so apologies if I'm wrong)

While I never played 1.0, if I'm correct there was atleast one primal/beastman tribe (I want to say Ifrit, unless he was the only one...) that referred to the races as human. All of em. Now its just beings, but essentially the same thing. Doesn't necessarily mean Hyur were the first, but could point to having at one point being much more connected.

[myahele]

Yeah, "man" and "human" are interchangeable when referring to the playable race.

From lore Miqo'te atleast existed since the 1st Astral Era.

The Keepers of the Moon have a matriarchal society, with surnames passed down from mother to child—some since the First Astral Era.

It's also speculated that hyurs and elezens share a common ancestor due to similar names:

There are Eorzean historians who believe that these similarities in names may be proof that the two races are of similar origin─’open-minded’ Hyuran historians claiming the Elezen are a bastard race spun off from the Hyurs (and not the other way around). Elezen historians, on the other hand, simply deny any blood relation whatsoever.

[Felis]

From lore Miqo'te atleast existed since the 1st Astral Era. It's also speculated that hyurs and elezens share a common ancestor due to similar names

Not in Eorzea. The Miqo'te invad.., I mean migrated, to Eorzea during the 5th umbral era, wandering over the frozen ocean.
Also, Elezen have french names, Hyurs english names.

Well they can interbreed, so it's possible that they all share a common ancestor. (I know nothing on the lore btw, so apologies if I'm wrong)

Do you know an example? I never saw an interbreed between different races ingame, only adoptions.
Like F'lhaminn adopted Ascilia after Ascilia's father died in the streets of Uldah, overran by a wild Goobbue (this was before Ascilia renamed herself as Minfilia) .

[Natsuno]

Do you know an example? I never saw an interbreed between different races ingame, only adoptions.
Like F'lhaminn adopted Ascilia after Ascilia's father died in the streets of Uldah, overran by a wild Goobbue (this was before Ascilia renamed herself as Minfilia) .

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...l=1#post490835

[tymora]

Their main audience = anime crowd
That should be enough explanation...lol

[Evergrey]

Their main audience = anime crowd
That should be enough explanation...lol

As someone said on another thread which I can't remember what it was about actually...
The Miqo'te and Au Ra are the eastern type of beastmen (human with some animal features) while beastmen from like The Elder Scrolls is the western version of beastmen (Animals with humanoid bodies).
I don't say that this is true or not. But looking at it this tends to be more correct.

[hairpinlegs]

Their main audience = anime crowd
That should be enough explanation...lol

To be more specific, a majority of their playerbase is in Japan, if I remember correctly.

They're going to make a large amount of design decisions based on Eastern culture, with limited influence from Western tropes. As a result, we have more human-like characters.