Character Creation Has A Race Problem

[MaloraYuki]

Ya that doesn’t mean it’s Japan. Thats kugane it has its own lore. Funny how people can’t separate real life from a game.

[Iscah]

But we need to know or see where they come from to have the facial features or hair? I mean we got the first look of an Au Ra in 2.55 and were actually able to play Au Ra when Heavenward came out. Then 3 years later we finally saw where Au Ra come from. Before that, Au Ra pretty just appeared out of nowhere and were walking around like it was nothing. But only because the devs decided to make it so.

Okay, fair enough - although Doma has been talked about since ARR (in the ninja questline), and Yugiri is introduced as being from there. It establishes the place even if we haven't seen it.

There are the few previously-discussed hairstyles available - limited, but available, and with additional options spread across different races - and nothing stopping a player from making an African-looking character if they want to (or at least what I would perceive as African if I saw it), even if the face options aren't perfectly what they are looking for.


As I wrote earlier, it's possible there's a technical reason for not having any wider noses - since all the different interchangeable pieces of the face need to move together for expressions and animations, it may be that there's a fixed strip down the centre of the face and the nose can't be wider than that.

In any case, the options won't be changed unless they completely reprogram the character creator. It seems they can only add new hairstyles and facepaint.


On actually getting new hairstyles, it seems to me that a lot of the available styles probably originate from designs for new NPCs - looking through the list, there seem to be a group that I'd associate with characters from post-ARR, then Heavensward, then post-Heavensward and Stormblood. (*) If so, then it's possible that if we do visit an Africa-equivalent, that's when we'll get more hairstyles suited to that location.

*Although, when was the Scholar job introduced? Alka Zolka's hairstyle seems to be at the end of the Heavensward part of the list (though it's also used for Charibert there). Does anyone know if that style was available prior to HW or if it was NPC-only to begin with?

[FeliAiko]

I can accept the argument of technical limitations on SE's part, as it wouldn't be the first time in their case (hence the "PS3 limitations" and "small indie dev" memes), but the other BS excuses I've seen whenever these kind of topics come up are just that.

SMN and SCH came with 2.0 launch. ACN was in 1.0 but was not a playable Job and gameplay wise was going to be different from the current incarnation.

[MaloraYuki]

I think the issue with the thread is how the OP presented it. Rather than coming off as a "race war" it could have been a "suggestion" thread. I understand where they are coming from, but the execution of it is rather abrasive. 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. Keeping in mind this is a fantasy game.
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. A post suggesting hairstyles, probably would have been better received, with maybe some examples of what you would like to see. 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.

Totally agree but it came off as a race war which is unneeded. It’s not a race issue it’s a character creator issue. Why label things black and white in a game that that’s not the “race”

[ErryK]

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Those mohawks are lovely, I would love for those to be ingame.

[alimdia]

Yeah except that wasn't what we were even talking about. You say you were reading so you should know. We were having a civil discussion. It's the people who can't walk away who added 15 pages to this.

Gonna be honest here, you seem to be enjoying the race war argument as much as the rest. If you were truly interested in offering the proper feedback to the devs you would've made your own thread without the race war, but you keep making excuses about duplicate threads and whatnot even though you know this thread isn't gonna go back on track nor will likely be passed on to the devs due to all the bickering, you also keep replying to people which perpetuates the argument.

[Skivvy]

Ya that doesn’t mean it’s Japan. Thats kugane it has its own lore. Funny how people can’t separate real life from a game.

I'm not sure if you're being intentionally obtuse, but I think it's pretty obvious that SE has taken some pretty big inspiration from Japan as well as Eastern culture in general with Stomblood. Of course the game has it's own lore, but then we see Japanese housing structures all over, kimonos, Vietnamese clothing / food options, and I'm sure plenty of other items I'm neglecting to mention.

[HyoMinPark]

I'm not sure if you're being intentionally obtuse, but I think it's pretty obvious that SE has taken some pretty big inspiration from Japan as well as Eastern culture in general with Stomblood. Of course the game has it's own lore, but then we see Japanese housing structures all over, kimonos, Vietnamese clothing / food options, and I'm sure plenty of other items I'm neglecting to mention.

While you’re right that Kugane and Hingan culture have derived inspirations from real-world Japan (and other Asian countries), that still doesn’t mean that those places ARE Japan, something people in this thread seem to be conflating. They’re part of a made-up realm, regardless of where they got their inspirations from. A lot of things in this game have taken inspirations from a myriad of different cultures, religions, mythologies, and folklores, but that doesn’t mean that they hold the same equivalence in the world of the game.

It’s incorrect to post screenshots of Kugane and say “This is Japan!” when it’s clearly not. Kugane may be inspired by aspects of Japanese and Asian culture, but it is far from Japan proper.

[Mahrze]

Weeee, 51 pages of outrage culture.

[Skivvy]

While you’re right that Kugane and Hingan culture have derived inspirations from real-world Japan (and other Asian countries), that still doesn’t mean that those places ARE Japan, something people in this thread seem to be conflating. They’re part of a made-up realm, regardless of where they got their inspirations from. A lot of things in this game have taken inspirations from a myriad of different cultures, religions, mythologies, and folklores, but that doesn’t mean that they hold the same equivalence in the world of the game.

It’s incorrect to post screenshots of Kugane and say “This is Japan!” when it’s clearly not. Kugane may be inspired by aspects of Japanese and Asian culture, but it is far from Japan proper.

I think it's fairly common for a lot of games, books, movies, etc to pull inspiration from RL places and things, blend with their own ideas, and voila! A new world! I do agree that you can't just state Kugane = Japan, because it's not. Heavily inspired perhaps, but no. But on the flip side of this, many people have been clamoring in this thread that there is no reason to bring RL into the game. That argument just makes me scratch my head as there are SO many things inspired from real world things (not just in Stormblood), but heaven help you if you're asking for slightly more diverse character creation options as that is obviously stepping over the line.

And just to addresss the thoroughly beaten horse before it gets mentioned again (not saying by you, Hyomin, just in general!), yes, OP could have phrased several responses better/not gone on the attack with some responses - and maybe picked a non-clickbait title. However, OP hasn't been in the thread for ages now, no need to just rehash that mess constantly. Conversations flow and shift as time goes on, and there's no need to be bickering over something from the first few pages. :X

Weeee, 51 pages of outrage culture.

Only 13 for me. Gogo max posts per page!