Character Creation Has A Race Problem

[Nandina]

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.

[OurMom]

As a black person, I know where you're coming from but this is one of those situations that won't be fixed in this game or any game like it. They already said they can't add more faces or it'll mess the game up. Since there can only be x amount of faces they're going to go the safe route.

Honestly I wouldn't want any of those features in a game like this, there's no slider and when we leave non black people to add defaults for that, it's just awful. Like in Archeage for example, the skin tone at the start of the NA launch was either tan or cartoony pitch black and there's no slider for the skin tone so we had to wait awhile before that was fixed(and the options still aren't great, several shades of pink 2 shades of brown).

However in games like BDO and Aion there's sliders so you can adjust your characters facial features and make it actually look black. Also maybe we should stop looking for other races to accommodate us and start making our own video games.

[Nabril]

As a black person, I know where you're coming from but this is one of those situations that won't be fixed in this game or any game like it. They already said they can't add more faces or it'll mess the game up. Since there can only be x amount of faces they're going to go the safe route.

What that means is that they cannot EASILY add more options. Any software can have thousands of options. It's just a matter of implementing them and knowing how to adapt the code to accommodate them. The issue is that the original code was written to handle x number of options from the Database and they don't want to go into the code and rewrite that part.

[Turtledeluxe]

As a black person, I know where you're coming from but this is one of those situations that won't be fixed in this game or any game like it. They already said they can't add more faces or it'll mess the game up. Since there can only be x amount of faces they're going to go the safe route.

Honestly I wouldn't want any of those features in a game like this, there's no slider and when we leave non black people to add defaults for that, it's just awful. Like in Archeage for example, the skin tone at the start of the NA launch was either tan or cartoony pitch black and there's no slider for the skin tone so we had to wait awhile before that was fixed(and the options still aren't great, several shades of pink 2 shades of brown).

However in games like BDO and Aion there's sliders so you can adjust your characters facial features and make it actually look black. Also maybe we should stop looking for other races to accommodate us and start making our own video games.

I'm sorry but HUH? How is this game supposed to last 20 years with these sorts of limitations? It's not just faces but things like housing, glamour, etc. With all these technical limitations it seems crazy to me to not just move on to a new MMO in the long term.

Hopefully when Yoshi P said the 10 year thing he meant that FFXVII online (or whatever) will launch at some point between then but XIV will still be serviced until the end of the next 10 years.

[reiichi]

I'm sorry but HUH? How is this game supposed to last 20 years with these sorts of limitations? It's not just faces but things like housing, glamour, etc. With all these technical limitations it seems crazy to me to not just move on to a new MMO in the long term.

Hopefully when Yoshi P said the 10 year thing he meant that FFXVII online (or whatever) will launch at some point between then but XIV will still be serviced until the end of the next 10 years.

It's not a technical limitation of the engine or something, like that older post seems to imply. (And that's likely an incorrect interpretation of the original answer provided back in a live letter or something).

The "game breaking" issue is that if SE adds more faces, they'd have to go re-QA all the animations to ensure it doesn't clip or animate improperly, and as seen with how they've handled newer race additions, that doesn't seem to be a priority. Adding in more faces without doing the proper work for it would just result in first-party "modbeast" issues otherwise, which would be divisive.

I'd definitely like for them to add more options, especially since the "graphics update" is exactly the sort of opportunity do this sort of work, but I'm not hopeful. It's still weird that /new/ hats are barred from Viera and Hrothgar. And that only midlanders have 6 faces, which is still not diverse enough, but a major step up from the 4 for every other race/clan combination.

[Neetborn]

I'm still waiting for a new FF mmorpg. I came from FF11 which was way more limited in options compared to 14. Sad to say but SE will always cater more to the Japanese and they haven't changed their ways since 11.

If you want RL representations then I live in the US and majority of the people here are overweight including myself and I'm Asian. The number of overweight NPCs in 14 are so few that they can almost be counted on one hand.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

I wouldn't say it has a race problem, as all the games races are pretty well represented, and you can choose your skin color to be whatever you want.

racial characteristics from the real world shouldn't apply, as the game doesn't denote races by color. Stop looking for racial issues where they don't exist, it makes it harder to fight for them where they do actually exist.

[Wiccan026]

One of the midlander faces for male hyur's is practically Asian in the default state. You also (if you play around with everything not just the default skins) can actually make characters look diverse and they aren't as white washed that I've seen (than again I've actually seen slim nose and lips on african americans in real life so what do I know).

Does that mean I wouldn't want them to update the character creator... of course not I'd love it if they did that (I think we'd be better off having some type of slider situation to go along with the defaults that we get to start with).

Oh and the afro hair you will never see in the character creator (even if you already own it) because you have to get it from the gold saucer... any hair you get in game (even if you're using a fantasia) will not show up in the character creator... it will only show up via the hair stylist.

[Ghastly]

Hyur midlander is the issue. I agree on the hairstyles, they need to do more research or try other mmos to see how the difference in hair style choices.

[Nandina]

.

Someone lacks reading comprehension. I already mentioned the skin colors are off and skin color alone does not a race make. But I’m sure you’re represented and have no problems with the game reflecting you in real life, just not others