New 7.1 hairstyle looks nothing like the winning hairstyle from the 2023 contest

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Originally Posted by MAJRIS

Please don't twist the information. I never said the xiv version looks appealing. I said it's not easy to make volume of strands to look good and not hitting polygon limits.

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It's the technique that gives the effect, really. Polygon counts are not as important as artistic ability. I say this having worked on video games as a 3D artist. Even trying to be generous to what you're saying, it's not a good excuse.

(Besides, they just did a huge environment update massively increasing foliage polycount, so...)

That's truly terrible execution of that hairstyle, I didn't even realise it was meant to be that one until people pointed it out. What a shame.

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Originally Posted by MAJRIS

Please don't twist the information. I never said the xiv version looks appealing. I said it's not easy to make volume of strands to look good and not hitting polygon limits.

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I quoted your whole post.

"For those who say the new hair is bad, it would be nice to provide example or suggest way how to model the hair to not completely fry gpus with millions of hair strings."

Which sounds to me like a 'they're doing the best they can within their limitations'. And also weirdly dismissive because people have been...providing examples and ways to adjust the hair without high-fidelity requirements.

"The player-provided examples from other games sadly don't look appealing."

Then there was this extra comment tacked on to dismiss any other actual argument. Look, man, I'm just saying--a lot of people who possess this hair type (you know, the one the contest winner originally shared and not whatever FFXIV's team decided to do with it) seemed to vastly prefer what GW2 was doing with it.

Deciding they don't look appealing within a whole is basically just letting the team know they don't have to try harder, because they can't "possibly" make anything up to standard. I just can't stand these kind of arguments.

If that wasn't your intention, I'm sorry, but please think about what you're even trying to argue for here. Your comments together inadvertently make it seem like this quality is okay, because it sounds like you claim they shouldn't even attempt any other quality. (Or, worse: continue to never add curly hair at all).

I'll be shutting up from here so I don't derail this thread into any actual arguments. Sorry, again, just in case.

Writing to add my voice to this thread. I don't think the in-game model looks like what the original submission intended it to look like: a curly textured style. Why pick this as the winner if it is not going to be faithful to the original artist's vision? It's somehow more disappointing that it's been done badly than if it had not been done at all. Please fix this.

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Originally Posted by Evermomo

Even trying to be generous to what you're saying, it's not a good excuse.
(Besides, they just did a huge environment update massively increasing foliage polycount, so...)

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Fair point. Personally, the task of designing and texturing such shapes to not look ridiculous would be my personal hell.
If it is not a poly limit then having a conversation (similar to the live letter panel about ground textures) to bring us closer to understanding why so many short hair in the past, would be something nice to have.

Not only does the preview looks like it's an incomplete hairstyle, it also looked like it's designed without considering how it'd look like on certain face models. I feel like it looks awkward on this particular Au Ra model, but imo it has to do with the hairstyle looking like it's not complete.

Adding my agreement. If the original design was going to be so thoroughly ignored, what was the point? It's disrespectful to the designer and all the players who were looking forward to seeing this hairstyle in game.

This is so bad. There's no way making textured hair is that impossible. So many games have loads of textured hair, this is just sad.

The texture pattern isn't the same as the original - what we got in-game is more wavy than curly. Don't know if I'll unlock it or not, but I've been aching for more type 3 and 4 hairstyles.

I remember this haircut from when the contest happened and honestly was looking for it. I didn't even register that this is the same design.

Not going to lie, even as an "inspired by" cut it really doesn't do justice to the original, and I feel bad for the artist. Looks very sloppy and sort of oily - like someone didn't wash their head for a week. A certain community does a better job at creating unique hairstyles.
I get it that there's a chance they simply didn't have enough time considering 7.1 seems to have a lot of other graphic adjustments, but if that's the case - why not just postpone the haircut that clearly requires a careful attention until you have enough time, and go with something simpler?


I hope they'll listen to the feedback on this one and fix it, even though that probably doesn't have a high chance of happening.

I didn't even know it was the hair of a contest winner. My first thought was, "Oh, great, more short hair."

Adding my voice to this thread as I'm someone who is also very disappointed in how this hairstyle turned out.

Like so many others, it had to be blatantly pointed out to me that this hairstyle was this specific winning contest entry- they look nothing alike. It's as if all volume and layers have been stripped away from the ffxiv character models and they have dripping wet hair (minus the actual water/moisture)- represented by the heavy looking "waves" and zero curls.

I also feel very sorry for the original artist. Being off the mark from one's original design a little bit is understandable. But this is like firing at the intended target and hitting an entirely different bullseye, labeling it "inspired by" because you know you didn't do it justice and calling it done. Feels lazy.

Not trying to be super mean here, just stating things how I see it. SE is usually really good with these things, so what happened here? Time constraint? Lack of resources? A lot is coming out with this upcoming patch, I wouldn't be surprised if it was one of those two things or other. I hope this can be remedied.

There's nothing I can say that hasn't already been said better and by someone more qualified but man. My disappointment is immeasurable.

It is flat out unacceptable that one of the only black inspired hair styles that won this contest is reduced to this. I am sorry but this isn't even "inspired by" this is flat out changed. I hold a large amount of respect for all the teams that work on ffxiv, and I honestly want to believe this is a fluke, but this needs to be changed. Not only is it poorly textured, you as well used the lowest quality take you could have possibly gave us to try to distract us from the fact this is supposed to be curly hair.
If you want this hair in the game, fine, add it. But please add a version of the hair that is closer to the contest winner, you have so much talent and skill on this team I know for a fact you can do it.
Dawntrail is all about people being proud of their culture and heritage, let people be proud as their character. Let textured hairs be textured, not this flat sea weeded mess.

It's a contest winner, so it's baffling why they didn't bother treating it like one. They chose it for a reason, so seeing it come out like this is disappointing...
"Inspired by" makes it sound like they just gave up. It's disrespectful to the original artists and is a blotch on the art team's reputation in their inability to replicate the design properly. Like, I have the utmost respect and sympathy for the art team and their work and the stress that they're probably under, but this should have been set to the side until it could be done properly.

I know theres probably people out there that are going to use the excuse of "b-but the polygon count!" or "It's difficult....:^( " or something but, that doesn't work here when other, older games and people that make [REDACTED]s have managed to make this sort of hair texture work and look good as well for who tf knows how long.

Also here just to add my voice in support of the original creator's intended design. I hope the dev team will take to heart the concerns and rework the design to more closely resemble the artist's original work.

This is an offense to the original design and artist. It needs to be addressed that this isn't even remotely near what the design that won looks like. This looks like soggy ramen draped on someone's head. Anyone who says the excuse of "Well they can't do this because of limitations-" stop. Like full stop they've done heavy hairs before with ornaments. These curls aren't a big ask. They genuinely are NOT a big ask to design. SE needs to do better.

They can do better than this. We've seen what they can do. And they can absolutely do FAR better than this. How many times does the playerbase have to say "we want you to put more effort into textured hairstyles" until they actually start trying? And yes, if you make a hair "inspired" by a textured hairstyle and the majority of people cannot even tell it is supposed to be textured until they see the contest entry it was supposed to be based on... you did a bad job. SE, do better!

Heck, GW1 had pretty decent natural hair textures in Nightfall. I was so thrilled at being able to make a character with hair like mine.

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Originally Posted by Pseudochrome

The in game model is so bad that I have to wonder what the point of even selecting this as a winner was. I sincerely hope this was just incompetence that somehow slipped under the radar of management because they could have chosen any loose curl hairstyle and not gotten peoples' hopes up to have actual POC-coded curls that aren't the afro...

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We're only just getting a transparency fix for the bunny tights, which have made your legs look white for years. After fixing the transparency on the 2B dress, they went ahead and released Gaia's set--on the cash shop!--with the same problem.

I think it's a continuation of them simply not thinking to test things on dark-skinned character models, because it's not a priority. And that's disappointing.

Needless to say, and I greatly disappointed by it.

Everyone in this thread said my thought exactly, this is rather disappointing but I'm not surprised by this either. Atleast give the artist respect and not be lazy about their design and how hard they must of worked on it.

They really need to do better

I'm astounded how they managed to make this a whole different hair texture like the references weren't very clear. what we got is cute enough but it does NOT match what's in the contest, which is not a good look given this game's issue with black hairstyles in general

just chiming in to also voice my disappointment, when I saw that this hair had been selected for the contest I was SO excited to eventually get a hairstyle with curls that were more like mine, and to use them on my own character, even if it would be a long wait for it to happen. Its so disappointing to see that the hair that was "inspired by" the contest design doesn't maintain what most players like myself were highly anticipating which was the curl pattern.

People have been asking for more textured hair for years and so to pick a contest hair that had it only to not implement it feels really insulting. I don't want to imply the devs were being deliberately malicious, but it's been years, even if textured hair is harder for them to implement, I feel like there should've been greater effort than this.

This looks nothing like the contest winner and needs to be revisited. This is shameful, and if I were the artist I wouldn't want to be associated with this mangling of my design.

ms paint lookin hair

This is beyond ridiculous. I was so excited to finally see something different than all plain straight hairstyles that dominate this game, especially as someone who has naturally curly hair that I love. It’s insulting to see a change like this and downright infuriating.

I don't normally care too much about the hair styles they put in the game and whatnot, but holy shit they fucked it up pretty bad with this one when compared to the original design. The hairstyle looks like the Au'ra just got out of the shower and didn't dry their hair or something. Maybe it'll look slightly better with the highlights alongside it instead of just the one solid color like they're showing, but this still looks really bad and is kind of a slap across the face to the design winner to put out this hairstyle that is "inspired" by it.

I wonder what caused this. Laziness? Poor direction/incompetence? Just not understanding what the aesthetic was going for. I'm curious how the JP players feel about it. If they like it, that would probably mean that their idea of curly hair, especially when displayed on a darker skin character evokes different imagery than it does in the United States. It's sad though, instead of floofy and bouncy it looks more like a wet mop. That said, I'm willing to admit it might be a combination of the colors chosen compared to the black with highlights in the art contest, combined with low res images. But I'm not too hopeful it will look much better in game.

Wanted to leave my support here as well. This hairstyle is atrocious, it looks NOTHING like the original intent and the designers missed the mark entirely. What should have been curly hair instead looks like wet, greasy straight hair. Please do better. There isn't enough curly or wavy hair in the game as it is, and this could have been a good opportunity to provide a different option. Instead we get more of the same, but worse.

Adding my support for wishing the final result actually looked like the submission and not “inspired by” a la on the same levels of those movies that are “based on a true story”.

I don’t dislike the the hair they’re giving us and if it was themed as “Fresh out of the shower” like how the Early to rise style is a bed head then I’d be fine with that.

Buuut since it’s not that I’m just disappointed at not having a curly/textured style outside the few (2?) we get. Plus it looks fairly flat in the preview, so is something off with the shading too and/or is the hair colour not helping the situation too?

WAIT its supposed to be that entry? i spent so long trying to figure out which one it was when the patch notes dropped like the artist even gave them a lovely cheat sheet for the render how?

Chiming in my support too... I don't understand how they could mess up this bad. It's spitting in the face of folks that really want curly/textured hairstyles with ANOTHER short wavy style. I'm hoping this is from lack of "experience" instead of maliciousness (not a good excuse either, seeing how long they've been working on this game and the connections they likely have to learn/hire someone to do the style correctly.)

Adding my two cents in the hopes that maybe they'll see how disappointed everyone is by the new hair style, it really looks nothing like what the contest winner designed at all. It's a shame that so many people (including myself) were excited to finally get a nice looking curly hair option only to have... whatever this is.

they really went for HEE HEEE with this one

swiping this under the rug by using "inspired by" especially feels low... representation has been a problem in xiv but also simply in video games in general, so many people were excited when this hairstyle won the contest only to face disappointment from what was released instead :(

literally just properly set up an account on the forums specifically because of this, extreme disappointment to see one of the actually really solid and potentially great step forwards contest winner hairs get altered to such an extent. i thought the point of winning the contest was that your hair would be in the game, not a poor facsimile of it?

Hahah yeah...I agree tbh but I also wanna believe that the preview is bad at the same time I feel like *maybe* they tried and couldn't figure it out properly hence "inspired by" cause they know it aint 1:1

Visual modders have been making better curly styles for years in Blender, for free, alone, and then putting them into this game. I'm not advocating anyone use them, but I'm just saying you can't act like it's a game issue when fans have been doing curls just fine for years.