Character Creation Has A Race Problem

[sindriiisgaming]

So, I've been tempted to use a Fantasia, and change from Miqo'te, so I started playing around with the character creation, and the lack of diversity is abysmal. I wanted to make a Hyur female, but I can't help but notice there isn't much wiggle room. There's only one cute braided mohawk style, and some dookie dreads. Where are the curly or even kinky hair styles? There are no flat twists, no cornrows, no box braids, no senegalese twists, no two strand twists, etc. I thought there was an afro option, but I didn't see that either. Under the nose options, there's are no truly wider options (I'm not saying the nose has to take up the entire face). There are no larger fuller lips. Skin tones run either cool or red, and there are absolutely no yellow undertones. Many of the little boxes on the skin color grid are virtually indistinguishable from the ones at least four spaces from them vertically, making them a waste. On brown skin tones, this makes the character appear ashy and in severe need of lotion. Skin tone alone is not diversity. Sure you can make your character Sudanese black, but if the nose and lips are slim and thin, is it really a black person? No.

Releasing multiple hairstyles is cute, but when are we going to get some new faces, noses, lips, and eyebrows that don't harken back to the late 90s and early 2000s? There's nothing wrong with a thicker brow. I bring this up, because there are many black and brown people who play this game, yet the character creation only caters to one demographic for the most part, and that's white. Ironically, I don't even see Asian faces despite this being a Japanese game. So you mean to tell me that my black and brown friends are good enough to receive a subscription from, but not good enough to have the character creation cater to them as well? I'm biracial (black mom, Russian dad) and while I'm not dark skinned I don't have thin lips and sharp facial features.

I already know some people are going to be in their feelings about this, and that's fine.

I feel this issue deeply with auras. There faces are locked to horns causing ppl to refer to them as "face I, face II. Face III ect. Characters looking unique in this game takes legit talent bevause the devs are kind uninterested in fleshing character creation out

[HeyMcFly]

It's why I choose this miqo face and blue skin- because a wishlist of character creation updates regarding skin color/ face changes etc won't happen in this mmo unless the JP community makes a point of bringing it to light Or during the next questionnaire, everyone bands together to ask the same questions

[Nabril]

Hair style in this game has nothing to do with race. Stop trying to be so dramatic. You're looking for disparity where none exists. Why the hell can't you just ask for more hairstyles without trying to make it about race? What's wrong with you?

[Iscah]

I will give you Lyse though. I complain about this all the time with my friend. That it seems like all Ala Mhigans are black or close to black except for... Lyse and Fordola. The two biggest Ala Mhigan characters. They are terrible characters anyways so again, don't need to get too worked up about it. It's just Yoshi-P doing Yoshi-P. He did the same thing to Lakshmi as well apparently.

Lyse, Fordola and Minfilia. Ala Mhigans don't have really dark skin anyway, but they're definitely paler than most.

On the other hand, it seems that dark skin and light hair is at least a normal combination for the race - see Ilberd, who has naturally white hair (even in the flashback we see of him twenty years earlier).

If we can jump realities for a moment, the manga Fullmetal Alchemist also bases its geography roughly on the real world, and the equivalent-to-Highlander race is specifically defined by brown skin and pale hair. So maybe it's a weird Japanese-media thing. Either that or the FFXIV character designers are FmA fans. I suspect they might be.