Possible Ideas to Address Hrothgar/Viera Hat Disparity?

[reivaxe]

I agree. I don't know why SE thought they needed to place the ears the way they are, I'd rather have them place them in a way that wouldn't prevent the use of hats and older hairstyles.
While I do understand that they simply made them the same way that Fran's ears work I just feel like it wasn't necessary. It's a different game so our Viera could have looked different, even if Fran made an appearance at some point.

It's seems like they did a complete redesign for the heads. Why the just didn't use the existing head models as a template the add what is need to make the Viera and Hrothgar. It may not have turned out as well but you wouldn't have locked out everything the players had earned.

Here's the thing ... people asked for Viera. Fran is what you think of when you think Viera. They are an established races in FF lore/ games with a canon look. They 100% added in Viera just to please people like myself who begged for Viera/ Fran, not because the game "needed" a random mammal-human race that would look 98% human. They can't really know that people would sploosh over "Updated Miqote with longer ears (their ears are NOT in the same position as Viera as is so this would legit just be kitty head with upscaled and altered ears) and a bunny tail!" even though that would likely be more popular than the Viera are now. Doing things that way would allow them to treat them like Miqote, allow them to have all the head stuff they have ... but they wouldn't look like Viera and if it's just a knock-off Miqote then is there even a reason for it?

To put it a different way, Hrothgar got added cause people and the devs wanted a beastly race. What would have happened if the devs gave us ... something with this as it's head? Sure, it would be more beastly than Miqote and it would be hella popular to and have all the same head stuff as Miqote. But at the end of the day it would just be a Miqote with fluffy fox ears, a doggy/ fox nose and a fluffy fox/ wolf tail. It wouldn't be that much more furry than what's already in the game so it wouldn't fill that void for a furry/ beastly race.

Were they right? IDK, I disagree with their design decisions for making these 2 races and I FULLY expect that if we ever see the missing genders they may not suffer the same design decisions that lead to these limitations as to actually show they "learned from this lesson" for the same reason I expect they will either A- Never make another limited job or B- Make the next limited job work in a way that addresses the issues with Blu.
That being said I can't fault them for trying to give people what they asked for. Again, people didn't ask for bunny Miqote, they (WE, I've been asking for Viera since before HW) asked for Viera/ Fren. If people had asked for ... human-red panda like characters that look human mostly for "A BIRD race!" I'm sure they woulda made up a name and look that allowed that idea to be a thing in FF14 with zero limits like how the Draggos were made up because people voted for a Reptile race a long time ago.