FFXIV 2nd expansion: Viera-like race still a possibility?

[Emerald_Wyvern]

Found that concept art I was talkin about

I hadn't seen this supposed concept art until just now. 10/10 would play.

[Naunet]

Oof no, I don't want viera. I want something a bit less... human-with-special-ears. Given SE's apparently inability to do... a lot of things, though, they'll probably want to stick to as close to human as possible. For that... well, I really like the design of the Ekose in WildStar:



Obviously they shouldn't just flat-out steal the design. But I think the Ekose strike a nice balance between human-ish enough to not make armor an issue while having distinctly non-human features that are more than just ears and a tail.

[Miscreant]

Found that concept art I was talkin about

Something like this would be brilliant, I would just like to see a bit more of a mix in the races we have. I think we have the human like races covered for now.

Although with the rumours floating around about the next expansion being focused on swimming this might be a better direction to take the new race in.

[Mimilu]

What about a race that was similar to Moogles in the Ivalice Alliance games? A cute race with some animalistic features.



Race: Mooglings, distant, terrestrial cousins to the Moogles of the Twelvewoods.

Physical Appearance: Bodies covered in fur. Small muzzled noses. Long, pointed ears on the top of their head. One, long antenna with a pompom on top. Pompoms and tips of the ears are the same color as hair. Small pair of flightless, bat-like wings on their upper back. Eyes similar to a rabbit's. Pawed feet.

Tribes: Tribe A is around Lalafellian height, with shorter limbs, a rounder build, and a longer pompom antenna, while Tribe 2 a bit taller (taller the Lalafels but shorter then Miqo'te), with more human-like proportions.

Fur colors: White, Cream, Light Brown, Light Red and Pink, Light Violet, Light Blue

[KisaiTenshi]

I mean, the same can be said about the female Au Ra, but there's the reason why Viera may never become playable in this game and to be frank, I am glad. Viera would add nothing new to the game (and you can already make a fake Viera with the bunny ears).

Well consider that the Au Ra look distinctly Asian. Square-Enix can adjust the neoteny all the way in one direction, which gives us the Lalafell, and then all the way in the other direction which gives us the Elezen and Roe.

Like if anything, the entire "simplifiying the waist/legs equipment" (how Miqo'te lost their butts) did a great disservice to being able create unique races because all the races can now only be derived from the shared Hyur/Miqo'te/Au Ra/Elezen equipment. Hence Viera would be little more than "bunny ear" Miqo'te with the current animation system.

And to be completely honest, I'm pretty sure a "tall bunny ear Miqo'te" would be little more than a head-swap much like the Au Ra, and players would take it anyway. Create a new set of animations and done.

But that's just not interesting.

I would rather have a Magitek Race.

Robot Female and Male

That is interesting, but I'm not sure how many people would play some variant on the Mammet.

To give an example from PSO2, the CAST are basically humanoid-ish robots. (Newman in PSO2 are basically Elves)


I could see some kind of "ancient Allegan" robot race that is restored as NPC's, but as for playables... kinda breaks the lore.

[Sully]

Saw this just now, though it is an old article:

FFXIV Viera Race concept art

Those male Viera look really neat to be honest.

[Nadirah]

So long as they don't pull a Vanguard with the bestial races we're fine.

Vanguard basically made Anubis: Humans with animal heads and no tails because armor wouldn't fit.

Yet, EQ2 and WoW both made anthro animals and the armor fits them just fine. Helmets(and hoods) got special models that essentially mold to the head, and the boots have everything below the ankle removed.

They're iksar/dragon hybrids created by science(iksar pulling an Allag).

[Seryne]

That is problematic because of a Catch-22.

People want fierce races, but many will not play females unless they are cute.
A race with cute females is not a fierce race.

This is how we ended up with the Au'Ra fierce male/cute female sexual dimorphism.

Dependant on how large the women are if they added a fierce race I'd actually play it. Like, if the women are as tall as FemRoes I'd switch. Of course I'm only one player out of many so SE can't make something that only caters to me.

[Nektulos-Tuor]

So long as they don't pull a Vanguard with the bestial races we're fine.

Vanguard basically made Anubis: Humans with animal heads and no tails because armor wouldn't fit.

Yet, EQ2 and WoW both made anthro animals and the armor fits them just fine. Helmets(and hoods) got special models that essentially mold to the head, and the boots have everything below the ankle removed.

They're iksar/dragon hybrids created by science(iksar pulling an Allag).

Even though I love the Sarnak the armor/weapon/animations for them are horrible.

[Sylve]

Yet, EQ2 and WoW both made anthro animals and the armor fits them just fine. Helmets(and hoods) got special models that essentially mold to the head, and the boots have everything below the ankle removed.

Except they didnt make helmets fit the anthro races properly. All they did was stretch the back end to reach the neck (half the time, they didn't even do that, you could often see the rear side of the hoods clipping through the neck entirely). And it looked absolutely awful.
Hood type helmets look absolutely awful on Worgens and Taurens, because their nose/mouth just pokes out of the front of the hood (even when the hood had a face hiding visual effect), this even happens with male Trolls and Pandaren to a lesser extent.
It was easy for WoW to 'adjust'gear for tails. They didn't actually need to do anything. Why? Because WoW leg armor is literally just a skin texture.
The ankle cutoff thing for the bestial races just essentially hid the majority of boots and applied a small colored patch above the ankle. If they even did that sometimes.

XIVs attention to detail with regards to Armor and clothing is its own downfall in some regards. Because the gear not simply a fancy texture directly applied to the skin of our characters, it makes it very difficult to give us races that are not mostly humanoid.
Add in the fact that our gear is is literally tailored to fit each race properly instead of simply creating a texture and stretching it as required for who is wearing it and the difficulty multiplies.
Could they do it? Absolutely. Technically speaking, the task of creating secondary appearances for boots isn't difficult. But it IS time consuming. Especially as the team involved with doing that is also trying to create the race itself.

It's unfortunate the visual quality of our gear is presently limiting our racial options, but its not an impossible thing to overcome.
It's possible that (not even being sarcastic) the PS3s might be limiting their options also. Having to work around such a tiny memory total is bound to cause problems.