Tail/Ear Swapping (Animal Races)

[ToxicFox]

No one who has said no to this has bothered to explain why...

[Zantetsuken]

No one who has said no to this has bothered to explain why...

I'll bite.

Many people don't realize that Customization and Creative Vision are mutually exclusive and are on the opposite ends of a spectrum. (just as Liberty and Equality are).

Final Fantasy has traditionally been a game of Creative Vision. It is why we have memorable characters throughout the series like Cecil, Terra, Cloud, Aerith, etc.. If players were given the opportunity to design their own party members from scratch, we would talk about them as much as we discuss the personality of Skyrim or Dark Souls main characters.

Now MMO games require Customization for your main characters. There's simply no realistic way to create a hundred thousand characters each with unique storylines.. So instead, the Devs achieve Creative Vision via a cohesive world inhabited by Races - each with distinct cultures, features, etc. The distinction of the races adds flavor to the world, and it give players a foundation from which to build their own characters.

Mi'qote are a race of cat-people. Adding bunny, fox, hippo elephant or other animal ears (or tails) to them means that they lose all distinction as race. The personality foundation that their current design has endowed them with would evaporate completely if they became a mere hodgepodge of animal ears and tails.

Devoid of any standard look, what the Mi'qote become? Morphlings?? Why can they only change ears and tails and not have claws, wings, horns or centipede legs? What of all the NPCs in the game? Are they part of a lost Mi'qote race or do the devs have to redesign all Mi'qote NPCs in the game to re-establish a real race again?

What room is there for new races when by a Viera, Padjal, Nou Mu, or Burmicians could just as easily be a Morph'qote variation?

There are many implications and trade-offs for going down this path, and most of them are very problematic from a designer's perspective.

I'd say if you want fox-people in the game, bring it up to the devs and see. But if they don't end up going that way, try to understand that they likely have a large and far-reaching vision for the game and your idea may not have worked for it. If it's a deal-breaker, then it might be best to find something that better suits you.

But if not, why not go along for the ride?

After all, how many of our favorite experiences in life were crafted by ourselves? And how many times have we gotten exactly what we asked for and found out that it wasn't as great as we thought it would be?