Character Creation Has A Race Problem

[Nandina]

I skimmed the thread, and there is a lot to quote and respond to, and I probably won’t get it all, but I’ll do my best to respond to everyone as I can if I can. But I do want this point addressed:

she turned the tone of this thread when she responded to valkyrie's response with a semi-racist post of its own. I'm gonna call it what it is. It was semi-racist. Not calling her racist, but the tone of her very first response was semi-racist in nature.

Please explain to me, how what I said was hateful, disparaging, and advocating that no one else get their representation? We’re not getting anywhere, because people are claiming non-issues and evidently don’t know what racism is, but keep utilizing the word. You all keep saying I’m looking to be offended, when I can flip the script and say the same thing back.

Anyways. . . The videos aren’t the same length cause I tried to speed things up instead of doing a 360 on every hairstyle like how I did with the Highlander Male. I will try to break them up in separate posts. In any event, I’ve taken the liberty of putting relevant quotes and commentary under each video, but I also want to highlight and bold the relevant points of the OP.

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.

Either way I think labeling it and making into a purely racial issue is heavy handed, and labeling facial features as "Black lips" or "white lips" etc is pretty unhelpful to any case you're trying to make when you're talking about race. It's not very hard to say fuller lips, wider noses, flatter noses and so on.

It's.. rather mistaken to say some of the stuff said here. There's no such thing as "black noses" or "white people lips". We know better than that now. Far better.

Notice I did say wider noses and fuller lips. Not once have I ever said “black lips” or “white lips” as the two above claimed I did, and the post is time stamped and has time markers for when it was edited. If you look at when I edited my initial post (because I had too much typed) you’ll see that it was before either person made those comments. Therefor they reacted to something that was imaginary.

The darker skin tones are odd, but not completely unusable to make a dark/deep skin-toned character, to represent themselves or culture if that's their wish to do so.

However, it has already been said there will not be changes made to the creator section any time soon. They do however add hairstyles often. [b]A post suggesting hairstyles, probably would have been better received, with maybe some examples of what you would like to see.[\b] I do think some of the requests would be difficult to implement in the game, as judging by the "afro" which is a mess. I would love to see curly/kinky options, but the physics/textures would probably not work well with however they currently design hair.

But I did do that, lol. I gave examples and everything as shown above.

I'm not taking an issue with the suggestion itself. My issue is with the way that is being framed. If FFXIV did not have any option for darker skin tones, then the weight of the argument for representation would be much heftier. As it stands, though, there are options in-game to allow for people to design a character to their personal tastes.

I never argued that there weren’t ANY options, lol. I clearly said that you could make your character darker, just that the undertones were off and looked funny.

I advocate for the creator's choice to include whatever race, gender, etc. they want without being forced to try and appeal to everyone's sensibilities..

I never tried to force anyone; if anything I asked a question which was directed to SE. I never said “SE better put these extra options in the game.”

Notice in each of the videos that when I up the color scale, the skin gets cooler; as I go down, redder. When I go up, the skin has a greyish tint because a cool undertone under a browner one has that effect. Yes this isn’t real life, but it’s safe to assume that Hyur were modeled after real life humans. Humans aren’t grey like that unless they’re ashy like I mentioned or have the wrong makeup foundations hade.

Female Midlander

There's only one cute braided mohawk style, and some dookie dreads.

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.

Ignoring the fact that most of those screenshots look like Caucasian people with darker skin...

So cleary people can see what I see, yet they’re still have a problem.

This the easiest way I can convey my point. If people still don’t get it then. . . I just know what else to say.


———

Female Highlander

You should probably look at highlander then.

Now hang on, that was a perfectly viable suggestion, and in fact I think you'd find male and female highlanders have a lot more option to make traditionally "black" features.

I actually have to change what I said about the “dookie dreads”. If you notice, the back of the dreads are still straight, but it’s close.

Highlander Huyr has better options for those looking for yellow undertones and some of their hairstyles are braided too.

I’m fine with the rest of the post, but this point in particular I don’t agree with, only because they’re still straight hairstyles despite the braids.

For example, Highlanders (yes, you wanted to make a Midlander, I've read that) are the ones that have more options to make them look like black people and there are many black NPCs in Gyr Abania.


You maybe can't make a black Hyur girl that looks truly black, but you can with Highlanders and Roegadyn for example.

I don’t agree with the Highlanders at all in that regard.

[Bellsong]

Notice I did say wider noses and fuller lips. Not once have I ever said “black lips” or “white lips” as the two above claimed I did, and the post is time stamped and has time markers for when it was edited. If you look at when I edited my initial post (because I had too much typed) you’ll see that it was before either person made those comments. Therefor they reacted to something that was imaginary.

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

I really do hope for more options that you and others have suggested as I'm always down for more options, especially more curly hairstyles!

[Reinha]

I’m fine with the rest of the post, but this point in particular I don’t agree with, only because they’re still straight hairstyles despite the braids.

Yeah, you're right. I noticed my mistake when making the female Highlander. I must have been thinking on some other gender/race combination.

[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.

[uvuvwevwevweonyetenyevweugwemu]

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

Yes it is due to height range differences. Midlander is grouped together with Au ra and Miqo te in some gears models (maybe all, cant tell atm), while Highlander is grouped with Elezen and Roegadyn, per gender.

[Iscah]

Aside from having ways to alter your nose and mouth, it would be nice to be able to construct your chin or cheekbones? I do get WHY we have pre-determined faces to make it easier for them to code/design the character creation, but not everyone will have the same style of chin or cheeks.

The 'jaw' setting changes that somewhat, I think? Also I remember someone saying a while back (in another topic) that they'd used the makeup settings to make their Elezen's cheekbones less pronounced, so perhaps you can get that to work in reverse.

Yes it is due to height range differences. Midlander is grouped together with Au ra and Miqo te in some gears models (maybe all, cant tell atm), while Highlander is grouped with Elezen and Roegadyn, per gender.

What are you meaning with that? Design-wise, as far as I'm aware everyone of the same gender gets the same gear design (other than race-specific items of course), but model-wise I'm quite sure Elezen and Roegadyn are going to need separate versions of everything. Female Roegadyn and Highlanders *might* be the same proportions, and Midlander/Miqo'te/Au Ra most probably, but Elezen, male Roegadyn and male Au Ra are more unique shapes even if they're similar heights.

I don't know for sure but I assumed the gear appearance data is stored separately for each race, they just might be able to copy-and-paste when making the models if the characters are the same size.

[uvuvwevwevweonyetenyevweugwemu]

What are you meaning with that?

To put it this way, the things you set in character creation is overwritten or hidden under/by the gear models. This include helms or glasses/visors, meaning the height also scales the head size. The gear models is grouped by both height range (vertical axis) and waist size (horizontal axis):

1) male hyur/miqote
2) male elezen/roegadyn/aura
3) female highlander/elezen/roegadyn
4) female midlander/aura/miqote,
and last 5) lalafell both genders.

It's the first things they get rid off from 1.0, too many models loaded. They are grouped so instead of loading 12 models of same gear, game only need 5 models. The female Hyurs are separated because different breasts range (I think) but it's also why we can't have butt slider because each group need to have body, head and pants/feet attached to each other. The tldr version when you're getting a new helm, you're essentially getting a new head. Same with body piece that is part of a set, the breasts for body piece in same group is same size/overwritten no matter what you set in character creation. This make sures glasses/visors stay attached to the head, not floating on the neck or not matching the head size, for example.

[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?