Hairstyle Concerns for The New Races

[Penthea]

Doesn't really matter what it feels like to you, the math doesn't lie. 16 for the men race and 16 for the women. Men are given unique fur pattern options but no highlights, women are given highlight changing versions of their hair, both things no other race has. If there's more to come we'll see but yeah, they're very much even Stevens right now

This math doesn't add up nicely. Every viera face can have any viera hairstyle. This is not the case for hrothgar. Claiming that the math doesn't lie in this context is like telling two groups of people that they have an even amount of clothing, but in the case of one group they fit only half of them. So while both groups have the same amount of clothing, only one group can wear everything. The math only looks tidy when you don't bother to think about the end user experience.

And it does matter what it feels like to me because I am a player. This content was made for players. And as a player I am concerned about the very restrictive hair options for hrothgar. If hrothgar cannot even share hairstyles among themselves, then naturally it's going to make players worry if they can use other hairstyles they unlocked or bought. I'm not really too worried about this with viera given how you choose hair for them is identical to the existing races, but in the case of hrothgar we got the au ra horn treatment, and we have seen those horns to only ever be locked to faces.

Seems like this is turning out to be another case of male viera ... As in people not taking something at face value and convincing themselves they will get something that wasn't shown just cause it wasn't spelt out to them directly by yoshi.

The difference is there has been a well known lore reason, since before FFXIV was even a game, for why male viera are never seen. There has literally been zero lore as to why hrothgar/ronso cannot share hairstyles among themselves. So you can argue that players should expect male viera to be unplayable, but you can't make that argument for the restrictions on hrothgar hair. No one had any reason to think that hrothgar hair would be given the au ra horn treatment.