Character Creation Has A Race Problem

[Iscah]

[other posters' character model suggestions]

Notice that these two faces are the exact same. If you were to change the skin and hair to a lighter one, it doesn’t effect the other features. You still get a pretty Euro looking person, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Does Rachel Dolezal and Martina Big changing their skin color change the other features of their face? Or how about an example people can relate to: Kylie Jenner. Lol.

[your 'European versions']

I'm a bit lost where you're going with the celebrity examples, but for the first bit of your post - I don't think the two other examples have used the same face at all - or if it's the same basic face, the eyes are quite different and they don't look the same to me.

Anyway, if a face can look African when paired with African colouration, and Caucasian when paired with Caucasian colouration, I feel like that's not quite the same as "not being able to make an African-looking character at all", even if you're more restricted in the choices.

And again, you're further restricted if you're set on being able to create the appearance you want specifically with a Midlander Hyuran when ultimately the character creator is quite limited for each single race but does add up to having more variety spread across the different races. Midlanders cater to a particular subset of human appearances, Highlanders to a different subset (and further appearance options are available from the other not-perfectly-human races). I don't know if they've covered all the bases between them but I think it's better that they have their own niches with subtler variations than to try and make one race cover everything.

Hyurans are also the one race where they've actually split the clans to have completely different appearances - effectively doubling the available number of 'human' face options versus any of the other races (even if it it firmly divided into two sets of options). For any other race, the models for the clans are identical and it just comes down to differences in colouration or details in the eyes.

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On the issue of whether Hyurans=humans and whether they need to have all real-world races covered, there are two ways to look at it.

On the one hand, Hyurans (Midlander and Highlander together) are the one race that are physically human - height somewhere in the 150-190cm range, small rounded ears, skin tone varying from peach to brown.

But there's another element that defines Earth-humans: we're the one sapient race found across the planet. This is not the case in Hydaelyn, where there are many other races who have physical features we consider 'non-human' but are still culturally equivalent to them.

All Hyuran cultures = real world human cultures, but not all human cultures = Hyuran. Some translate to being Miqo'te desert tribes or Xaela or beastmen.

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And again, there's the question of geography. Hydaelyn is clearly Earth-inspired, and we have Eorzea (= Europe and the Near East), Ilsabard (Russia and middle Asia?), Othard (east Asia) and the vaguely referenced 'New World' (apparently the Americas, judging by that one glamour set) and the mysterious southern continent of Meracydia, origin of the Warring Triad.

Meracydia is the one place we know nothing about - by deduction, it may equate to either Africa or Australia, both candidates for local Hyurans being dark-skinned but only if they exist in the first place. The lorebook doesn't say what kind of people live there - only that much of it was rendered uninhabitable by the ancient war with Allag, and the few modern inhabitants are hostile to outsiders, thus the lack of Eorzean knowledge about the place. (The only possible indication that there were Hyurans there, at least in the past, is that there's one among Sophia's 'demiurges' - but they are transformed in appearance and can't be seen as any particular race, or it could have been a captured Allagan woman rather than a native Meracydian anyway.) The only Meracydian races specifically mentioned in the lorebook are the 'tree-beings' and 'centaurs' that summoned Sephirot and Zurvan, respectively, and also dragons if they are as sapient as their Eorzean cousins.

So anyway, I may have gone a bit off-track, but my point is - the world of Hydaelyn has no definite Africa equivalent for "African" Hyurans to originate from, so from a lore-building perspective, where would an African-looking Hyuran have come from? The argument that "it's medieval Europe and there actually were Africans in medieval Europe" doesn't simply transfer over, because those Africans still had to migrate there, which they can't if there's no Africa to migrate from.

You can get creative with the lore and say they're Meracydian... for now. But if we ever go there as part of the story and it turns out that actual Meracydians aren't like that, it's back to the question of "how can Africans exist if there's no Africa?"

Perhaps you don't care about lore yourself, but it's still something to think about.

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On the "lack of fuller lips", maybe they don't go quite as large as you want but there *is* a noticable difference between the the mouth options. Is the 'full lips' option (always option #2 if I remember correctly) not big enough?

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For what it's worth, I wouldn't count Highlanders as 'black' (ie. by my understanding, either African or Aboriginal Australian, depending on context - and I assume everyone else here is meaning African. (Though still unclear about correctness of actually using the term in either case, and would avoid it myself.))

Geographically, I thought Ala Mhigo is roughly equivalent to the Middle East? I don't know enough of the cultures around that part of the world to be able to identify anything more specific. Please do let me know if there's an actual location they are based on.

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Ultimately, unless they completely overhaul the character creator, I don't think there's any way they can add more 'face elements' into it without removing the current ones, and I doubt they would do that. Maybe they could have done better at the start, but it wasn't - and it couldn't be changed now without affecting some people's existing characters.

On the other hand, new hairstyles are added constantly. Ask for those.

[Joven]

wall o' text

I think a way SE could work around their self imposed limitations in the character creation is to remove the sub-race aspect. Instead of having Hyur Midlander and Highlander just have Hyur, with all the features, hair and body types available to mix and match.

[Iscah]

I think a way SE could work around their self imposed limitations in the character creation is to remove the sub-race aspect. Instead of having Hyur Midlander and Highlander just have Hyur, with all the features, hair and body types available to mix and match.

Actually, from how I understand it works, keeping them split is exactly why it gives us more options in the first place.

To create a character, you pick the race/clan/gender, then the basic face, then the details.

Each face always has six options for eye shape, four options for the mouth, etc. - the face is different but the number of options never changes. (ie. I'm assuming there isn't any space, programming-structure-wise, to add more options for any one face.)

BUT for each of those faces, the options are not exactly the same. Nose #5 on face #3 will not have the exact same shape as nose #5 on face #4. But you can't mix and match the appearance of one onto the other, it can only be used on that particular face.

So every additional face gives you another set of options, so 'merging' Midlander and Highlander would do nothing except cut down the overall amount of faces available. (Also, Highlanders have completely different models and animations - functionally more like a separate race than another clan of the same race - so unless they can add an option to let you choose between the sets, you'd lose that difference as well.)

The only possibility for expansion is whether there's a definite limit for how many basic faces there are - unlike the other settings with a consistent number of options, the number of actual faces is higher for Midlanders (6 male, 5 female) than for the other clans/races (always 4). (Giving Hyurans a total of 10/9 options per gender instead of 4 for the other races.)

Perhaps all races could have six. Only the programmers know for sure. But even if they could give that increased number of characters, we'd only get one extra Midlander face out of it and all the other added variety would go to the other races.


For other races, removing the sub-races wouldn't affect the number of faces available, but it would still lose a lot of other variation that distinguishes the clans - different skin colours, unique eyes (Sunseekers' slit-pupils and Dunesfolk's 'no pupil' appearance), Au Ra scale colours, and varying customisation options - eg. Wildwood Elezen's earclasps vs Duskwights' unique tattoos, presumably stored as the same data. Also all the lore attached to those different clans.

[MoroMurasaki]

So anyway, I may have gone a bit off-track, but my point is - the world of Hydaelyn has no definite Africa equivalent for "African" Hyurans to originate from, so from a lore-building perspective, where would an African-looking Hyuran have come from? The argument that "it's medieval Europe and there actually were Africans in medieval Europe" doesn't simply transfer over, because those Africans still had to migrate there, which they can't if there's no Africa to migrate from.

You can get creative with the lore and say they're Meracydian... for now. But if we ever go there as part of the story and it turns out that actual Meracydians aren't like that, it's back to the question of "how can Africans exist if there's no Africa?"

Perhaps you don't care about lore yourself, but it's still something to think about.

This entire post is very well articulated but this section is specifically why I've prefaced all of my agreements with these character creator changes with "assuming it fits within established lore" and at this point I think t that is questionable at best.

It's clear Iscah has a stronger understanding of Eorzean history and geography than most so to the people making these requests I'm curious how you would navigate this particular hurdle?

[Nandina]

Ah, I guess I must have misread or just saw what I wanted to see then, I apologize for putting words in your mouth

Apologies accepted!

...

This entire post is very well articulated but this section is specifically why I've prefaced all of my agreements with these character creator changes with "assuming it fits within established lore" and at this point I think t that is questionable at best.

It's clear Iscah has a stronger understanding of Eorzean history and geography than most so to the people making these requests I'm curious how you would navigate this particular hurdle?

The thing is, I never really saw Eorzea as a whole as being inspired by Europe. When I see Limsa, I see a tropical environment that reminds me an awful lot of the Carribean. When I look at Ul'Dah, I see Northern Africa, especially with all the ancient ruins and what not. Using real world history, Northern Africa historically was black and many of these people migrated South (and a lot of tribes in Sub-Sahara say they came from the North) due to constant invasions and other reasons. Due to close proximity to Europe, many Greeks and Romans moved inward; and a lot of Italians immigrated to Libya in the early 1900s. That's why if you go look at today, there's a HUGE array of phenotypes, including traditionally black ones. The one place that really gave me medieval vibes truly was Ishgard. That reminded me a lot of the Crusade Era.

[Magic-Mal]

Happy to see this thread back on track, finally! Great.

So anyway, I may have gone a bit off-track, but my point is - the world of Hydaelyn has no definite Africa equivalent for "African" Hyurans to originate from, so from a lore-building perspective, where would an African-looking Hyuran have come from? The argument that "it's medieval Europe and there actually were Africans in medieval Europe" doesn't simply transfer over, because those Africans still had to migrate there, which they can't if there's no Africa to migrate from.

You can get creative with the lore and say they're Meracydian... for now. But if we ever go there as part of the story and it turns out that actual Meracydians aren't like that, it's back to the question of "how can Africans exist if there's no Africa?"

Perhaps you don't care about lore yourself, but it's still something to think about.

I actually think it's alot simpler than you might think. If you look at these two characters, Sawney and Whatshisname:



I think we can agree that these characters are meant to be black right? Despite their features.. and that's what I want to go to.

I believe it could easily be done, however the characters could be considered old models. Remember how Yugiri was first introduced with a Miqo'te model? Or how we never saw Miqo'te children until a certain point(still have yet to see Miqo'te boys)? Or Au Ra children? Until certain time in the game's life they either didn't exist or looked different until they were fully animated. We have many Hyurs out there with unique faces that aren't playable in Ishgard, Gyr Abania, and Othard.

I think this could be a perfect example. Say Sawney is a beta or alpha version. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they eventually made a character that is black but looks different. A more complete or up-to-date character. Their origin? Who knows honestly... But that's for SE to answer!

This goes for Male Miqo'te children, Roegadyn children, various mixed races, Lalafell children(under 12) and more. I swear those people must hide in the best spots for them to go undiscovered for so long.

EDIT: LOL wrong pics....
EDIT 2: Fixed

[Ghastly]

Happy to see this thread back on track, finally! Great.



I actually think it's alot simpler than you might think. If you look at these two characters, Sawney and Whatshisname:



I think we can agree that these characters are meant to be black right? Despite their features.. and that's what I want to go to.

I believe it could easily be done, however the characters could be considered old models. Remember how Yugirir was first introduced with a Miqo'te model? Or how we never saw Miqo'te children until a certain point(still have yet to see Miqo'te boys)? Or Au Ra children? Until certain time in the game's life they either didn't exist or looked different until they were fully animated. We have many Hyurs out there with unique faces that aren't playable in Ishgard, Gyr Abania, and Othard.

I think this could be a perfect example. Say Sawney is a beta or alpha version. It wouldn't surprise me at all if they eventually made a character that is black but looks different. A more complete or up-to-date character. Their origin? Who knows honestly... But that's for SE to answer!

This goes for Male Miqo'te children, Roegadyn children, various mixed races, Lalafell children(under 12) and more. I swear those people must hide in the best spots for them to go undiscovered for so long.

The devs achieved the idea of fuller face features in some cases (mostly always 1 option per face feature) so to them there really aren't any limits to adding that concerning lore or region. As you say, it's simpler than lore, it's about adding more of the Afrikan features when they figure out how to add more stuff, lore doesn't prevent it. In fact, if we're equating hydaelyn to regions in the world races like Au ra should have more Afrikan features.

[Skivvy]

OP isn't the only person who has been posting, and plenty of the responses have been normal. Instead of continuing that conversation, people are instead opting to harp on "OMG, OP'S APPROACH. IF ONLY THEY DIDN'T PULL THE RACE CARD". Lowest hanging fruit are always easiest to attack I suppose. There has been plenty of time and opportunities to move the conversation back to customization / adding more ethnic options, but instead it just circles back to "oh this is tumblr crap", "OP shouldn't have gone racial" responses. How many pages of those replies are needed?

[Joven]

OP isn't the only person who has been posting, and plenty of the responses have been normal. Instead of continuing that conversation, people are instead opting to harp on "OMG, OP'S APPROACH. IF ONLY THEY DIDN'T PULL THE RACE CARD". Lowest hanging fruit are always easiest to attack I suppose. There has been plenty of time and opportunities to move the conversation back to customization / adding more ethnic options, but instead it just circles back to "oh this is tumblr crap", "OP shouldn't have gone racial" responses. How many pages of those replies are needed?

But constantly arguing about arbitrary issues is the only way for people to feel important. Let them have their fun.

[Magic-Mal]

OP isn't the only person who has been posting, and plenty of the responses have been normal. Instead of continuing that conversation, people are instead opting to harp on "OMG, OP'S APPROACH. IF ONLY THEY DIDN'T PULL THE RACE CARD". Lowest hanging fruit are always easiest to attack I suppose. There has been plenty of time and opportunities to move the conversation back to customization / adding more ethnic options, but instead it just circles back to "oh this is tumblr crap", "OP shouldn't have gone racial" responses. How many pages of those replies are needed?

Thank you!!!!

snip.

Okay here's an example. So Bengal Tigers are going extinct. This foreigner guy comes up to your country with this brilliant idea to save all the tigers from dying but at the same time he shows disdain towards the people of the country. Do you, as a member of the country:
A. Set aside your differences, get over the guy's attitude, accept the suggestion, and save the tigers.

Or

B. Refuse to support the plan because you don't like what the guy says about the country and all the tigers die.

Pick. It's not about real life compared to the game, it's about the principle.