Child-like characters?

[AngeliouxRein]

I'm just as curious about why everyone is being overly touchy on this topic. I came from anime MMOs and literally, all of them have chibi or underage character models that you play. No one cared not even in the slightest about this and just carried on without a second thought. In Mabinogi, you can literally make your charact 10yrs old and strut around in ANY outfit. That included outfits like the sexy Scathatch outfit or the revealing hunter outfit they released for a Halloween event, paired with high heels and victoria secret wings. No one would blow up the forums about seeing characters like that and honestly, it was like the norm for anime MMOs. We just didn't care.

Our minds just didn't jump to those thoughts, or at least nowhere near as much as it does here. And if it did, you never heard about it. It makes me wonder what the heck is going in non-anime MMOs to where everyone must think of the pervs first before adding anything to the game. Is it really just the times we're in, or something else? Or both?

[Vidu]

I'm just as curious about why everyone is being overly touchy on this topic. I came from anime MMOs and literally, all of them have chibi or underage character models that you play. No one cared not even in the slightest about this and just carried on without a second thought. In Mabinogi, you can literally make your charact 10yrs old and strut around in ANY outfit. That included outfits like the sexy Scathatch outfit or the revealing hunter outfit they released for a Halloween event, paired with high heels and victoria secret wings. No one would blow up the forums about seeing characters like that and honestly, it was like the norm for anime MMOs. We just didn't care.

Our minds just didn't jump to those thoughts, or at least nowhere near as much as it does here. And if it did, you never heard about it. It makes me wonder what the heck is going in non-anime MMOs to where everyone must think of the pervs first before adding anything to the game. Is it really just the times we're in, or something else? Or both?

My guess would be that the dev-teams behind those anime-MMOs you're talking about arent part of globally known, multi-billion dollar company with a lot of famous brands.

Or in other words: a tiny korean studio has a lot less to lose than Square Enix. And chances are that anything said tiny studio does will go unnoticed by most people. Infact, a sh*tstorm because of showing underaged characters in... questionable outfits etc. could even be good for such a studio/game, since that would put it in the spotlight for once.
FFXIV on the other hand is already constantly in the spotlight, SE as a whole has a huge media-presence - and something like children in sexy clothes will only hurt them.
Bottomline is: Those anime-MMOs can get away with it because no one cares about them - FFXIV and SE cant.

Personally I find it way more disturbing that people seem so extremly eager to play as children in a setting like this - while it is fantasy, yes, we've got tones of war and violence going on. This doesnt seem like a game to me where playing a literal child would be "natural". The game is also not being marketed to children (at leat in germany we've got an age-rating of 16). So needing to play a child to "play yourself" kinda goes out of the window.
So... why is playing a child so appealing to people?

[TheMightyMollusk]

Just to be a smart ass, children do exist in war and violent environments if you're currently unaware. It isn't unimaginable that a child, who is almost a god in our game's instance, will be involved in the goings on of the world.

The game has an instance of this with Unukalhai. He was the Warrior of Light for the Thirteenth, but being a kid, he wasn't strong enough to handle it. Now the Thirteenth is the Void.

[KageTokage]

Different companies might simply have different standards, I suppose.

Can't blame SE for wanting to play it safe, anyhow.

[AngeliouxRein]

@Vidu @KageTokage

Yeah, I did take into consideration the whole rep thing and big company problems but it just leaves me scratching my head is all. Like when they announced Nier being added to the game, it made me wonder if they just were like" welp they're robots, shouldn't be a problem that 9S looks questionably young".I mean no one really knows how young the Nier characters are but they look a little young, especially 9S. But, I don't know, it's their game and I'm not going to push it.

And I get what you're trying to say about the violence and war but again in anime games, we didn't care. We were all too busy trying to create our favorite anime characters of all time and pushing them through every war, battles, trials, you name it. None of these censorship like thoughts occurred to us in the slightest. But if it just them playing safe, I don't blame them. I just find it interesting in where they stand.

[Wyvernheart]

because perverts exist, especially in FFXIV

Fixed. Had to.

[zeylos]

I find it quite interesting than after the release of the neir gear more ppl seem to want child like chars. And slightly creepier too tbh

[Halivel]

I find it quite interesting than after the release of the neir gear more ppl seem to want child like chars.

Doesn't look like this for me. I remember people asking for playable Padjali long ago. Demand seems to be pretty much the same. It's just that more people came to the game lately and more started to use forums actively.

[Theodric]

In regards to Alisae, Alphinaud and Ryne...

The presence of younger characters as non-playable characters is very different to the presence of younger characters as playable characters. The development team control exactly what happens to non-playable characters. They cannot, however, control what people do with playable characters.

So it isn't really a double standard on Square Enix's part.