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

[Aron73]

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I must ask 10/4/3 is that your Strength/Charisma/Intelligence stats of that char?

[StriderShinryu]

In games that allow for character creation, I almost always go for a female character. I'm a fairly normal, average guy in real life so I have little interest in being a fairly normal, average guy in a game too.

As for race? I just think catgirls are great and I really like how they are portrayed in FF14. They aren't really treated as a pure fetish object in that most of their animations and behaviours are fairly standard for a humanoid character but they still have moments, like in their excited emotes or when they go to sleep in an inn, where they are more typically cat like.

As for appearance specifically? I basically just went with what I find visually appealing but still appropriate to the game world, and this follows through with the glamours I usually choose. I guess the only real "special" thing is that I needed her to be as short as possible.. but that, again, is just a personal preference thing. Nothing really special to it beyond "that's what I like."

[Kirajah]

Gender: For most of my life I have had struggled with gender identity, with relatively severe gender dysmorphia before settling on being agender/gender non confirming as I matured and my hormones changed. When I first started playing games it was during my gender dysmorphic days and I thought I /had/ to choose girls. Because I was a girl. The first time I ever played a male character I just made a character on Runescape on a whim, it felt rather liberating, and it kind of stuck from there. As I grew older I started accepting myself more and while I won't completely refuse to play female characters, I am still most comfortable playing males. If 14 was more alt-friendly I'd likely have a 3rd alt who was a fem roe.

Race: This one is hard to touch on because I don't actually know myself. In WoW I was a blood elf main, a draenei main, and a vulpera/worgen main. However, due to WoW's increasing difficulty in having alts, I settled mostly on the blood elf with some draenei on the side. I avoid humans whenever possible, Elves are as close as I tend to get. One of the things that usually turns me away from beast races is how armor sits on them more than anything else. I don't know why I avoid humans, just boring I guess? They are in every game. :x In 14, My Miqo is a moon cat and my elezen is a duskwight - both relatively rare and I like underdogs.

Appearance: With the furry races aside (I just think they are neat/cool)- I tend to go with what I find attractive. However, this isn't entirely the case in 14 at this moment. I find my alt (male elezen) more attractive than my main (currently a miqote). That said, I do find my Miqote attractive in the younger, cute boy sense. But my Elezen kind of... showcases my uh ... "silver fox" attraction. He is older and greying, but 14 lacks any real age definition even light wrinkles so, I can't have him look exactly how I want but he's close enough. While I do like my miqo, I am (likely going to swap to m!Viera). The Viera feels younger than my Miqo but I also find him more attractive. I went with cooler-toned, yet natural-looking skin/hair colours for them because I like them over more bold/warm tones. If I go with unnatural colours, I use them as accents (like my Elezens bright purple eyes and my Miqo's bright green)
I probably wouldn't be swapping to Viera if my caveats for Miqo weren't bothering me (Posture,) and if more than 3 hair styles look good on them, (so you only see those 3) Male Viera has bad posture too, so... we just have to see which posture I hate more.

[EmoPanther]

Eh.. I chose a woman because I don't like playing what I am Irl. I don't wanna risk being one of those wierd people who project themselves onto their character to a scary level. As for race, I like tall women /w muscles *shrug*. I suppose that fits for appearance too.

If there had been anything that wasn't just a different flavor of human when I started playing I would probably have chosen that, but unfortunately there were only Lalas, and I have no interest In sailing on that particular boat. There's Hrothgar now, but only males, so again no. I might switch to a Female hrothgar if they don't look janky like the males, if only to divorce myself from myself further :/

[Illmaeran]

Bump to help this student out.


My wife recently made a character appearance for me to use as a retainer. I gave her full control with only the stipulation that it be the character she'd want to be if she were warped into the game. She made a Fem Roe with max height, bust, and muscle tone then did the other features to look cool. She said her reason was her ultimate fantasy character is physically strong/powerful, tall, and busty.

[Cyreil]

I was introduced to the game by a friend and they made my character for me to help me get past the character creation portion. Aside from a few tweaks here and there, I have been the same character since day one. It grew on me and have decided to never change and I still plan to remain the same even after the expansion arrives. I see my character as an extension of myself so the gender is the same as my own.

Also, I have ear wiggles. People love ear wiggles.

[Shin96]

Most of my characters have white hair, since I used to have white hair when I was younger.

Otherwise, I prefer Hyur and Viera. I also like to give flaws to my characters to make them seem more realistic in a fictional world.

[RitsukoSonoda]

Generally on most games I look for a character close to my IRL size. This tends to be female characters as most games do not have options to make a male 5'6" or shorter in the 110-120lb range. The ones that do I frequently end up making a female character anyway because the female characters in that game have better outfits/costumes/glamours/etc while males are left lacking. Most games I also tend to not play a "human". I only use the quotes simply because like FFXIV humans aren't actually called humans in game.

[Tsumdere]

Gender: I am a woman irl, but my mains are always male characters. I do this because I want to put myself in the shoes of the other gender for a while, as well as that I think it is neat to be a knight-in-shining armour archetype. I do have a few female characters though, but I do not play them much.
Not only that, but I am one of the rare people who think that in general, the armour looks better on males.

Race: I don't ever really like playing races with extra parts - i.e. Miqo/Au Ra and definitely do not like beast races. My main is a male Elezen and my alt is a female Hyur. All my other alts are various Elezen, Hyur, and Roe. Even in other games, I play almost exclusively human and elf. The only exception is that in WoW I played Tauren a lot because that is a damn cool race. I also think that Elezen men (can be) some of the most attractive men in the game.

Appearance: Always white hair and always max height slider! I wish I had a cool story about why I always pick white hair, but the answer is because I played too much Devil May Cry as a kid. I'm also very short irl, so playing a short character is an immediate turn-off. I will not even consider playing short races.

tl;dr - I just want to be a tall, elf knight 100% of the time.

[Jennah]

I used to play FF11 way back in the day.
Back then, there were significant mechanical benefits to playing a race; so I wound up with a Mithra (who were always female) because they made the best Ninjas ... and only Ninjas could dual-wield kitchen knives and be the best chefs.
So a decade later I remade good old Arhtima. Nobody read her name backwards.