So, What was the excuse again regarding Hroth and Viera?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster

It's not just visual, being told what visual to see is sent to you, which is a client server process, and one more thing to be loaded into the clients memory. Every option adds a larger list it's having to load from and is a challenge. Read Yoship describe the difficulty of creating more glamour slots.

Perhaps they were not happy with the quality of the Viera ears when they tried to rework how the models worked either. Something like a mod there could be a lot of things people are overlooking, but I'm sure these forums would be flooded with people upset about how their Viera ears looked if they changed them. It's not as easy as a mod because the complications and expectation is just at an entirely different level.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Not a factor for visual appearance.
This is a factor they consider, but they are considering a worst case scenario (a hunt train, S rank or special FATE boss) where a huge number of players may load. However, there is not going to be a difference between 100 Hrothgars wearing a hat and 100 Hyurs wearing a hat.
Yes, but the point is a single player did all that on their own, yet a multi-billion yen company can't.

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Keep in mind, a 'single player' is not restricted on the limitations and guidelines of how hairs and hats work on characters. Or how it all performs at Limsa during primetime.
Designers are given a 'memory/storage budget' of how much they can work with, and it's not much for the sake of stability.
That's why the wavy haircut we recently have gotten looks like a discount version of the design that was made during the contest - It HAS to even work properly on the minimal spec of the game, even when the place is crowded.

The Hrothgar/Viera case are ... unique, and did not work it through properly with the head rigging.
If you take a look at the male Hrothgar from the side, the hair is *much* different from the usual, and rigging the hat pieces would require a lot of work.

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Originally Posted by Arrius

Keep in mind, a 'single player' is not restricted on the limitations and guidelines of how hairs and hats work on characters. Or how it all performs at Limsa during primetime.

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Right, but they are generally the same hats other races are wearing, which SE made to handle those situations - just adjusted for Hrothgar and Viera. Are they really adding 20,000 extra polygons to the hats in order to adjust them?

I sure hope double dye and outfit glamor dont get thrown in the Viera/Hroth hat shed.

They have given up giving excuses and are just staying silent.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

Right, but they are generally the same hats other races are wearing, which SE made to handle those situations - just adjusted for Hrothgar and Viera. Are they really adding 20,000 extra polygons to the hats in order to adjust them?

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Hair needs to be bent and creased at certain points to accommodate the hat, which can also increase the memory/storage load.

I believe it's also about keeping a certain level of acceptable quality going - Especially when it comes to the ears of the hrothgar and viera. Sure, some clipping can be acceptable but at many times there is so much going on around the ears that its simply not feasible to display them in the first place.

An example, if I may - Imagine a tophat, where the viera ears clip along the cylinder section at the middle, covering the ear half in length and width. And that's only one of the ears you can have on them. Then there are also the faces of the hrothgar that look different on a fundamental level, coming in different sizes and having different ears and facial features like horns and weird whiskers.
Taking that into account, you would have to individually adjust each set of ears and the faces, for each headpiece, for both viera and hrothgar - And keep them in a position that is somewhat realistic without changing the features of the hat itself or removing anything from their face.

I would believe that is simply not feasible for SE to pick it apart on such a level, as much as I would like them see trying. Maybe they attempted to, and the result was just not up to snuff on a level that was deemed acceptable, or they didn't want to dedicate a group of people for such a lengthy process. (As a fun fact, you even notice it on a few more recent headpieces with Elezen and Miqo'te at times: Not even their ears are safe from being removed when they simply not work.)

Sure, there was an attempt with adding glasses to the Hrothgar - But if you do take a closer look, they are not very well placed at times due to the difference in their facial forms. So I am not sure if I want to see such a level of work on head pieces, though.

Could they do better? Yes. Absolutely.
What I would want to see is that they could offer a more in-depth explanation about this and what is on their radar regarding this all.

This is my late evening pourout, so hopefully it makes sense for some <_>

I also think that their silence and lack of transparency is a huge problem in many cases. People tend to get more angry when they can't understand the 'why'.

What really doesn't make sense with the female hrothgar, is they even designed their heads to be more like the humanoid characters, so it's not like they've got some weird custom head that couldn't easily be adapted to the headgear.?

"Let those ears run free." - John Square Enix, 2019