Possible Ideas to Address Hrothgar/Viera Hat Disparity?

[Raikai]

SE obviously seems to think that not allowing any sort of clipping for viera is the preferred route. Something about ear clipping is so bad, that they won't do this. Adjustable ears, ear types? The reason?

I don't think ear types are the reason though... because they are very similar, except to the lowered ones that would probably clip down into a bigger helm with ornaments. They all start at the same base.

The clipping problem is more that some hats (pointy hats for example) would "slice" the ears in half because they are very close on top of the head and go upwards, different from horns or miqo'te ears that go more in a diagonal or sideways.

But still, there are about a ton of items that could be used even if they just let the ears clip through like they do in some Bozjan headgear.

[Yencat]

The clipping problem is more that some hats (pointy hats for example) would "slice" the ears in half because they are very close on top of the head and go upwards, different from horns or miqo'te ears that go more in a diagonal or sideways.

There's already a setting to turn ears completely off they could use for hats that are large enough to feasibly fit the ears inside them, they wouldn't need to worry about them coming out the sides or top of the hat.

But still, there are about a ton of items that could be used even if they just let the ears clip through like they do in some Bozjan headgear.

They can't just let the ears clip through more items because the ears aren't really the problem in most cases, it's the hair. The only reason the hood models work on us is because they make you bald underneath, a select few helmets that completely replace the head and hair also work, and small items that sit on top of the hair like a hairpin and don't require any further modification to the hair itself.

The bigger reason we don't have more (but definitely not all) working headgear isn't the ears clipping through or Hrothgar's face proportions at all, but the fact that they didn't make 2 models of the same hairstyle like they normally do that hide parts of the hair where the hat would sit when you equip it. Because this second, partially culled 'hat-hairstyle' doesn't exist for Viera and Hrothgar, if you were to force certain hats to show like in the image I posted earlier then the Hrothgar simply goes bald and Viera's ears and hair clips straight through it.

If they made partially culled 'hat-versions' of our hairstyles like they normally do then a lot more items would be able to be used while either hiding the ears or letting them clip through where appropriate.

[SturmChurro]

There's already a setting to turn ears completely off they could use for hats that are large enough to feasibly fit the ears inside them, they wouldn't need to worry about them coming out the sides or top of the hat.



They can't just let the ears clip through more items because the ears aren't really the problem in most cases, it's the hair. The only reason the hood models work on us is because they make you bald underneath, a select few helmets that completely replace the head and hair also work, and small items that sit on top of the hair like a hairpin and don't require any further modification to the hair itself.

The bigger reason we don't have more (but definitely not all) working headgear isn't the ears clipping through or Hrothgar's face proportions at all, but the fact that they didn't make 2 models of the same hairstyle like they normally do that hide parts of the hair where the hat would sit when you equip it. Because this second, partially culled 'hat-hairstyle' doesn't exist for Viera and Hrothgar, if you were to force certain hats to show like in the image I posted earlier then the Hrothgar simply goes bald and Viera's ears and hair clips straight through it.

If they made partially culled 'hat-versions' of our hairstyles like they normally do then a lot more items would be able to be used while either hiding the ears or letting them clip through where appropriate.

Oh, here we go with the hair! Makes sense though. Never thought of their hair being the main reason.

[Yencat]

Oh, here we go with the hair! Makes sense though. Never thought of their hair being the main reason.

Yep Which also makes me wonder if this is why Viera at least can't use any of the Modern Aesthetics.

Those hairstyles do have the second hat-compatible model, so then we'd either have a few hat-compatible hairstyles making it terribly inconsistent, or they'd have to go through every headgear item and force it to remain hidden when the character is a Viera in combination with that particular hairstyle.

But maybe that's tinfoil hat territory.

[SturmChurro]

Yep Which also makes me wonder if this is why Viera at least can't use any of the Modern Aesthetics.

Those hairstyles do have the second hat-compatible model, so then we'd either have a few hat-compatible hairstyles making it terribly inconsistent, or they'd have to go through every headgear item and force it to remain hidden when the character is a Viera in combination with that particular hairstyle.

But maybe that's tinfoil hat territory.

I think they could probably do it, including modern aesthetics hair, if they really wanted to. It probably is time-consuming, or at least too time-consuming for them to bother. Considering they already stated Viera wouldn't have hats, why bother?

[Raikai]

There's already a setting to turn ears completely off they could use for hats that are large enough to feasibly fit the ears inside them, they wouldn't need to worry about them coming out the sides or top of the hat.



They can't just let the ears clip through more items because the ears aren't really the problem in most cases, it's the hair. The only reason the hood models work on us is because they make you bald underneath, a select few helmets that completely replace the head and hair also work, and small items that sit on top of the hair like a hairpin and don't require any further modification to the hair itself.

The bigger reason we don't have more (but definitely not all) working headgear isn't the ears clipping through or Hrothgar's face proportions at all, but the fact that they didn't make 2 models of the same hairstyle like they normally do that hide parts of the hair where the hat would sit when you equip it. Because this second, partially culled 'hat-hairstyle' doesn't exist for Viera and Hrothgar, if you were to force certain hats to show like in the image I posted earlier then the Hrothgar simply goes bald and Viera's ears and hair clips straight through it.

If they made partially culled 'hat-versions' of our hairstyles like they normally do then a lot more items would be able to be used while either hiding the ears or letting them clip through where appropriate.

Oh wow... Didn't realize that the hairstyles actually had no hat adaptible option at all! good point... Though, if it's mostly about that, then it's even lamer, because Viera and Hroth doesn't even have a lot of hairstyles to begin with. It's literally just a matter of work, to adapt the hairstyles, and not just some crazy tinkering holding them back.

[Yencat]

Oh wow... Didn't realize that the hairstyles actually had no hat adaptible option at all! good point... Though, if it's mostly about that, then it's even lamer, because Viera and Hroth doesn't even have a lot of hairstyles to begin with. It's literally just a matter of work, to adapt the hairstyles, and not just some crazy tinkering holding them back.

It's obviously not the only reason, but it's a pretty big one I imagine.

And because it seems they decided pretty early on that mostly no headgear was the way to go they went a bit nuts designing some of the hairstyles for Viera, several of them have so much volume on the sides and in the back I'm not even sure you can properly cull them or squish them down to even look nice under something as simple as a bandana without ruining the hairstyle itself or causing the headgear texture to stretch to a ridiculous degree.

Hrothgar has the horned face which could cause problems (Do you remove it temporarily? Let it clip through the front like Au Ra horns?) but otherwise look much more hopeful for some wearable hats than Viera honestly, but they're in their own unique predicament with the Fantasia hair change situation and really only 2 hairstyles per face.

They made a big mess creating these races to a very narrow, specific vision seemingly without taking into account how players would take being left on the sidelines for every future hairstyle or headgear piece, at least until people kept being vocal about it and they gave a vague "it isn't the best situation and we will continue to work towards alleviating these issues and making them better in the future and finding ways to make things work".

I'm somewhat hopeful they'll do what they said they would but it feels more like PR speak and we'll get thrown a few scraps at some point but no major changes. They really designed themselves into a corner here so it'll be difficult to try and make these races equal to the others (and I don't think that was ever their intent either) without fundamentally reworking them. It seems like they think the "uniqueness" makes up for the lack of everything else.

But after one and a half year I've become pretty cynical so I'd love for them to make me eat my words and prove me wrong.

[reivaxe]

Delete both races.

Honestly this is the third thread today about hats for races that were announced to not have hats.

Your best option is to roll a proper race and they shouldn’t pander to people making new ones in the future because the people that beg them for stuff are never happy and will keep demanding more and more.

I agree that they shouldn't make pander races, if they didn't want to make Viera they shoulda just did full Hrothgar as much like with Draggos it was a thing they wanted to make.

But the genie is outta the bottle now so "delete em" isn't a constructive stance. They won't even fix Elezen's crap run cycle cause "what if people who play it LIKE it???" and they know that's a massive part of why they're not popular.

There's already a setting to turn ears completely off they could use for hats that are large enough to feasibly fit the ears inside them, they wouldn't need to worry about them coming out the sides or top of the hat.



They can't just let the ears clip through more items because the ears aren't really the problem in most cases, it's the hair. The only reason the hood models work on us is because they make you bald underneath, a select few helmets that completely replace the head and hair also work, and small items that sit on top of the hair like a hairpin and don't require any further modification to the hair itself.

The bigger reason we don't have more (but definitely not all) working headgear isn't the ears clipping through or Hrothgar's face proportions at all, but the fact that they didn't make 2 models of the same hairstyle like they normally do that hide parts of the hair where the hat would sit when you equip it. Because this second, partially culled 'hat-hairstyle' doesn't exist for Viera and Hrothgar, if you were to force certain hats to show like in the image I posted earlier then the Hrothgar simply goes bald and Viera's ears and hair clips straight through it.

If they made partially culled 'hat-versions' of our hairstyles like they normally do then a lot more items would be able to be used while either hiding the ears or letting them clip through where appropriate.

Unless you're talking about a small number of hats I think you're getting your order mixed up.

It's not a case of "They just didn't make the hat hair model :v".
It's more like "They didn't intend for these races to wear hats so they didn't make a hat hair model".

No matter how you toss it Viera ears are a problem. They would NOT turn them invisible as that legit defeats the whole purpose of the race and they already look like straight cheap trash clipping through the few hoods/ bucket helms they are allowed to wear. (I mean, I can't speak for them but it's how they treat tails in that unless something is meant to cover/ replace it it just stays there)
The best option IMO for Viera (Hrothgar having to give up the mane for hats is kinda a problem to seeing as that's linked to CC but they're willing to take away that mane so ehh) would be to make a hat hair model with the ears poking out through the bottom. Because remodeling holes into every hat and making the "floppy ears" work for anything would just be far harder.

But again, you would have to have 4 different "Hat hair models" or "hat models" that have the 4 different ear models sticking outta the bottom that may also have to relate to the size selected for the ears as well as hair and highlights colors. No other race gets that amount of effort to accommodate their racial CC options.

So yeah ... they decided to give Viera the freedom to customize their ears at the cost of head gear as ear customization on that scale would make it hard af to make head gear, so that's why they didn't bother making the hat hair models in the first place.

[Yencat]

Unless you're talking about a small number of hats I think you're getting your order mixed up.

It's not a case of "They just didn't make the hat hair model :v".
It's more like "They didn't intend for these races to wear hats so they didn't make a hat hair model".

I was talking about a small number of headgear and I'm not getting my order mixed up at all, I know why they (said) they did what they did. I'm saying they cannot let just let the ears clip through additional pieces of headgear like people are suggesting because the hair would go with it. Or disappear in Hrothgar's case.

So yeah ... they decided to give Viera the freedom to customize their ears at the cost of head gear as ear customization on that scale would make it hard af to make head gear, so that's why they didn't bother making the hat hair models in the first place.

Yes, but the freedom to customize your ears at the cost of everything else is pretty worthless with only 4 options, they could've done something really unique with the ears instead since they never intended to account for hats anyway.

For example: More ears with distinct silhouettes like asymmetry with 1 lop ear and 1 straight (and then a mirrored option for taste), ears with longer fur, Fran's more rounded and speckled ears, ears going out more horizontally from the base rather than straight up or back, a very short type for people that want to RP as a Feol, maybe even some of that iconic black ornamental Viera plating you could add, remove and dye to dress up the ears a bit to match your armor.

There really didn't need to be only 4 options, with 3 of them being pretty samey, of the racial feature you really wanted to highlight and remain unhidden by hats. And lastly of course more than 8 hairstyles.

Any of these options wouldn't have completely stopped people asking for more headgear but it would have gone a long way to show they made an effort and it was at least slightly worth it, because right now it just isn't.

[SturmChurro]

I was talking about a small number of headgear and I'm not getting my order mixed up at all, I know why they (said) they did what they did. I'm saying they cannot let just let the ears clip through additional pieces of headgear like people are suggesting because the hair would go with it. Or disappear in Hrothgar's case.



Yes, but the freedom to customize your ears at the cost of everything else is pretty worthless with only 4 options, they could've done something really unique with the ears instead since they never intended to account for hats anyway.

For example: More ears with distinct silhouettes like asymmetry with 1 lop ear and 1 straight (and then a mirrored option for taste), ears with longer fur, Fran's more rounded and speckled ears, ears going out more horizontally from the base rather than straight up or back, a very short type for people that want to RP as a Feol, maybe even some of that iconic black ornamental Viera plating you could add, remove and dye to dress up the ears a bit to match your armor.

There really didn't need to be only 4 options, with 3 of them being pretty samey, of the racial feature you really wanted to highlight and remain unhidden by hats. And lastly of course more than 8 hairstyles.

Any of these options wouldn't have completely stopped people asking for more headgear but it would have gone a long way to show they made an effort and it was at least slightly worth it, because right now it just isn't.

Considering viera don't get any hats, you'd think they could have given us more ear customization options. As is they really are really light on the customization.. I know someone will probably come here and go "limitations", but if the limitations are the reason we get such limited races, then they should have tempered their vision a bit..

No headgear, tiny amount of hairstyles, limited customization.. definitely not worth it..