Physics engines are responsible for handling clipping issues. It might look wonky for other purposes, but a proper physics engine wouldn't allow the type of clipping we currently see, because the hair and armour would be considered two separate objects that collide rather than intersect. Your point is well-taken, though, in that SE also needs to take into account hairstyles and such when designing gear in the first place.
I think that's a bit of a false equivalence. I can't think of a mainstream title being released in the last 5-10 years with similarly bad clipping problems. If other companies can manage it, why can't we expect the same from SE? Just because XIV 1.0 had a terribly-optimized inefficient mess of an engine doesn't mean we should all just nod our heads and accept it when they half-ass parts of the "upgraded" version.
Also, 1.0 would be an utter breeze to run on modern hardware. Hell, I had a laptop that ran it in a playable state - seven years ago. It's time to bring back the fancy shaders, high polygon counts, improved physics systems, and higher texture resolutions. The hardware can handle it.
