UCI Research Question: How did you decide on your race, gender, and appearance in FF?

[LisSquid]

Do you have any pics of your OG Lala?

Sadly, no. It was so long ago and I was playing on a terrible laptop + lacked any and all screenshot skills. His name was Kekei Kei, like an evil little rodent laugh, if that paints a better picture.

[Espon]

Female miqo'te because I like catgirls.

The appearance I went with was just something I would find attractive.

I tried to follow FF14 naming conventions for my name.

[Rinhi]

catgirls are cute
catgirls are cute
moonies are cuter than suncats

[Arazehl]

I started out miqo'te when I started playing FFxiv. I didn't feel right in that skin because I felt she looked more like a teenager, so I didn't stay miqo'te for long. The second race I chose was Hyur Highlander. She suited me far better as a person being an older female gamer and what my perception of what a WoL would be. I've been other races over the years, but always went back to Hyur after a month. I guess because after doing the game's story and all she went through, you become attached to your original character you played the game with. It's like how you grow attached with certain character NPC's in the game, I guess I grew attached to her. Whenever I switch races, I always feel something is missing.

Gender: Easy: I'm female

Appearance: Highlanders can look overly muscled and tougher than steel. I wanted to soften her appearance. I made her as short as the sliders would let me. Blonde and blue eyes. I didn't want her to look like she could rip a dragon's head off.

[Brightamethyst]

Gender: I always play females characters. I didn't even consider any male options.

Race: Normally I'm super boring when it comes to races. My FFXI character was hume, most of my WoW characters are human, etc, and left to my own devices I probably would have ended up as some generic hyur or catgirl. When I first started FFXIV though, my brother (who was also playing at the time) said "you should be a lalafell." On a whim I listened to him and have never regretted it even for a second.

Appearance: I just browsed the character creator til I found the mix I liked. I didn't have a specific look in mind when I started (not trying to create my RL self in game, or anything.)

[Yeol]

How did you decide on your race, gender, and appearance?

Race: I'm an animal lover. I own a cat and feed stray cats on regular basis --> Miqo'te.
Gender: I'm a female in real life --> Female in-game.
Appearance: I like being cute & feminine --> Character appearance represents my idea/image of cute & feminine.

[Vyrerus]

Chose male Hyur because at first I wanted to recreate my Hume from FFXI. The options in XIV could get pretty close, but ultimately I didn't like any of the Midlander facial options and the hair just wasn't close enough imo. Also weak facial hair options.

So I considered Highlander next, because their lore info was kind of reminiscent of Half-Orcs with some considering them to be Half Hyur Half Roe, even though they aren't really. My ex-GF also said I couldn't make one that wasn't ugly, so I decided to make one just to see if I could prove her wrong. I think he came out alright, though I've switched his hair and eye color since 2013. His starting hair color was auburn with green stripes in it on the same hair model that Biggs has. Later shifted it to dark green with black stripes. Then to just black. Then to the dark grey it is now.

I did try male Au Ra for a time. About two years. But I had a Highlander alt that retained my original appearance that I also played regularly and raided on as well. That alt had originally been male Roegadyn, but when I switched my main to Au Ra I couldn't reconcile not having a Highlander character then, so the Roe had to go.

I've always played male characters unless I'm specifically trying to see differences in games where sex selection has any real impact on gameplay. I think female characters are still overplayed and overrated, but that's life. I also didn't want to be like my brother who pretty much refuses to play male characters unless there's no option.

That's about the size of it. I rather enjoy the high musculature as I've always admired strength, and I've sought strength IRL too. I haven't weight trained in some years now, not since being in the military, but my last benchmax was 235 pounds(106.6 kilo) and squat max 425 pounds(193 kilo). Still nowhere as ripped as a Highlander, but it's something I can always aspire towards.

[NonobiNobi]

Race: I went with Lalafell for my character in the end partly because I find Lalafell interesting, just overall as well as lore wise, and partly because I love the shorter races in fantasy settings. Also, because I'm on the shorter side in real life.

Gender: Made my Lala female cause I usually pick females and because I'm female in real life as well.

Appearance: I slowly went through each option choosing what I felt best represented who I wanted Nonobi to be as a character. Some of my choices were even chosen based on the small bits of backstory I had started coming up with for her at the time.

[Rowde]

When I was younger I would always make avatars that looked like me and personally I feel that was because back then games were mainly a conduit to an escapist power fantasy for me.

As I've gotten older and learned to appreciate video games more as a medium of storytelling I was able to diversify my options more, since I no longer saw the PC as just a stand in for myself, but as a separate character on a journey that I was actively guiding along.

To that end, the main factors for me in choosing race, gender, appearance is if the game takes any of that into account or not.

For example, the Mass Effect and Dragon Age series have full VO for the PC avatar [*EDIT that changes depending on gender chosen and during "morality" choices in dialogue paths] and that alone can be a motivating factor for me. I enjoy watching/listening to the different performances of the Voice Actors and will usually commit to as many play throughs as is necessary to cover all the variables (or make ample use of alternate saves to see more options before choosing a final result for progression). Some games will sometimes have additional narrative options, or remove them, based on the PC avatar Race/Gender too. Those usually don't effect my initial choices at character creation, but if I either suspect there are systems like that in play or hear about it on the interwebs, then it will effect my choices on subsequent play throughs. Also seen games that even restrict class/job/profession choices based on race/gender, and usually in those games I will make my initial choice based on the class I want to play and then make the appearance choices based on that. Like if the game is forcing me to play a male ogre to access the Berserker class, then my male ogre is going to be Berserkerest looking male ogre I can create.

If the game lacks any actual consequences for those choices (like FFXIV for example), then I will usually just make an avatar that I personally find visually appealing. Even then, I don't usually put too much thought in this anymore because over the years I've engaged with a plethora of character creators so I have a pool of prior creations that I usually just recreate approximations of in the newer games.

[*EDIT For example, my main character in FFXIV is based on my "female warrior" character type, which was originally inspired by Red Sonja, and I've used this as a starting point during character creation across many games.

FFXIV


Dragon's Dogma


GTAV


Monster Hunter World


Skyforge


Tera


Code Vein


Black Desert Online

[Hysorn]

I use video games to escape reality, so when I play RPGs I like to create my character as similar to me as I can(With some obvious stylistic liberties), which is why I've been so hyped for the midlander stubble. It's the easiest way I can disconnect for a few hours, pretending to not just be another worthless replaceable cog, contributing nothing to the world and dying alone and forgotten as most of us will. That and being able to mostly ignore how f'ed up my life is right now. It ain't a solution, but at this point I doubt there exists one.