Child-like characters?

[Melichoir]

Tbh by consequences I mean more potentional blacklash than creeps. Creeps are pretty much everywhere, so it's impossible to avoid them completely - you can have the game full of bulky monsters and it still will have its creepy part of community.

But in regards to people just in general, those who don't even play the game but will see a short cute race combined with humanity's love to jump on disgusting conclusions can start their crusade against the company just because they can. I mean... Some people in other game (Granblue Fantasy if it matters) assumed I'm a creep few days ago just because I like cute characters, and some of them are minors. People are... well, they are people.

I am agree that we should either have bigger height slider or one more short race, but I also can see potential problems behind this, sadly. At this point I'm glad I was able to set my irl height on my character at all, which is 160cm. It would be good if it was possible to make shorter than average male character not only for Lalafells and Miqo'te, and partly Midlanders. I could go with female character of course, but I don't play female characters even though I am female myself, so welp... good for me that I like male Miqo'te, otherwise there is a chance I wouldn't have suitable race in the game at all.

I dont think the issue is so much the height as much as it is the form. If we wanna make some comparisons, Goblins and Gnomes from WoW dont receive the criticisms that lalafells in FFXIV (Or harvin from GB) do simply due to design choices. It is very clear that they're 'shrunken' adults vs something that could swing both ways in the eyes of the public. If anything, I think that lalafells get an even worse end of the stick compared to Harvin due to subtle design differences between the two. But I digress.

Point is it's not about the height, its about the build. If they redesigned lalafells to have more 'adult' figures at their current stature and some of the criticism will disappear. Of course, expect some responses to be "Well now youre trying to sexualize children for sure!" simply because it doesnt matter how theyre designed, some will argue theyre 'children' no matter how they look.

*comparison picture*

I blame anime culture for it and i am honestly sick of it, i like Anime but i hate certain cliches like this with passion.

Different styles depict age differently. But in this case, it really was a situtaion of "Oh, lets draw a lady with the body of an 18-21 YO and call them 14". It's a wierd lore choice that really doesn't make to much sense because it offers nothing story or lore wise other than "Check it, this girl is 14!" Unless that was a running joke, but its been a while since Ive watched Gurenn Lagenn

[Halivel]

I dont think the issue is so much the height as much as it is the form. If we wanna make some comparisons, Goblins and Gnomes from WoW dont receive the criticisms that lalafells in FFXIV (Or harvin from GB) do simply due to design choices. It is very clear that they're 'shrunken' adults vs something that could swing both ways in the eyes of the public. If anything, I think that lalafells get an even worse end of the stick compared to Harvin due to subtle design differences between the two. But I digress.

Point is it's not about the height, its about the build. If they redesigned lalafells to have more 'adult' figures at their current stature and some of the criticism will disappear. Of course, expect some responses to be "Well now youre trying to sexualize children for sure!" simply because it doesnt matter how theyre designed, some will argue theyre 'children' no matter how they look.

Agree with this statement pretty much, with maybe only addition that it also depends on community itself. In case with Auri and also Miqo'te, who have pretty obvious features of adult women, there are still people who says that they look like teens. So as you said - redesign Lalafells and there will be comments about children again. So well, in conslusion I quess we can say that everything matters - build, height, and how broken community mindset is, with last factor being probably the biggest one.

[Melichoir]

Agree with this statement pretty much, with maybe only addition that it also depends on community itself. In case with Auri and also Miqo'te, who have pretty obvious features of adult women, there are still people who says that they look like teens. So as you said - redesign Lalafells and there will be comments about children again. So well, in conslusion I quess we can say that everything matters - build, height, and how broken community mindset is, with last factor being probably the biggest one.

Yeah, theres a lot of factors that go into it. I think if they looked closer to harvin than lalafells, youd have less commentary, and closer to gnomes from WoW than harvin, youd get even less. But youll still get it no matter what because there are gonna be 'nay-sayers' no matter how you cut it. At some point you gotta say "Well this is good enough". But this is all academic in the end, as FFXIV wont change lalafells unless there is some legal issue that arrises where a government in one of their markets says "Hey, change these characters or we blacklist your game." But dunno if that would happen or if itd be good.

I think the only irony ends up being is the "Oh my god Children analogues" in one thread and in other threads its "Its just a game bro" when someone does the push up emote on another person. While Im not suggesting anything should go, I think that the 'line' tends to shift incoherently at times.