Possible Ideas to Address Hrothgar/Viera Hat Disparity?

[Allegor]

The problem is, they consider viera/hrothgar a finished product. Pretty sure they've said so themselves. Any hairstyles that are supposedly supposed to be added after the fact would just be a bonus. God forbid we would ever get hats, I literally don't ever see that happening. Never know, but I seriously doubt it. It looks like they tried for awhile to give us more headgear that wasn't hats (circlets, etc.), but there overall design hasn't really changed, so largely viera/hrothgar are left out. As people have said, they were never supposed to have hats, so why bother? That's probably their thinking.

The hat problem wouldn't be that much of an issue if we could at least get more hairstyles. Hrothgars specially only have 2 hairstyles unless you change the actual face to use the others, and even then it's only possible by buying a Fantasia. That's a bad decision no matter where you look at it which, at worst, made the race dead on arrival for many.

[SturmChurro]

The hat problem wouldn't be that much of an issue if we could at least get more hairstyles. Hrothgars specially only have 2 hairstyles unless you change the actual face to use the others, and even then it's only possible by buying a Fantasia. That's a bad decision no matter where you look at it which, at worst, made the race dead on arrival for many.

Yes, even if hrothgar in the future get more than two hairstyles per face, it would still require a fantasia to access them! You guys could have a couple dozen hairstyles per face, but that would still not fix the core problem! Requiring a fantasia SUCKS! Granted, it would be in SE's best interest! I'm sure if hrothgar had options, they would continue to cash in on those fantasias, may look scummy though.

[HyperiusUltima]

I mean sure, but in general it would probably require making it an entirely separate skeleton that is attached to the body, which makes it harder to work with when making animations and gear show up fine on them without clipping issues. It's as they said before about how they did Hrothgar's entire head - the Hair basically IS the head. That's why it's so limited and I'm hoping for 6.0 for them to address this(because skeleton work takes a LONG TIME to get right, especially for a ton of gear and future gear they plan on adding). If they don't do anything for those two races in terms of headpieces in 6.0, then that ship is dead on arrival.

[Payadopa]

The problem is, they consider viera/hrothgar a finished product. Pretty sure they've said so themselves. Any hairstyles that are supposedly supposed to be added after the fact would just be a bonus. God forbid we would ever get hats, I literally don't ever see that happening. Never know, but I seriously doubt it. It looks like they tried for awhile to give us more headgear that wasn't hats (circlets, etc.), but there overall design hasn't really changed, so largely viera/hrothgar are left out. As people have said, they were never supposed to have hats, so why bother? That's probably their thinking.

Hmmm. Yeah, could be.

But I'd counter with the devs did it (in their spare time, which shouldn't have happened). So they felt an obligation which is as good as admitting it. The rest is just PR speak.

[Ayuhra]

The hat problem wouldn't be that much of an issue if we could at least get more hairstyles. Hrothgars specially only have 2 hairstyles unless you change the actual face to use the others, and even then it's only possible by buying a Fantasia. That's a bad decision no matter where you look at it which, at worst, made the race dead on arrival for many.

Obvious solution: Greatly expand what the Aesthetician can do.

We should be able to completely recustomize characters with him. Hair, face, height, etc. If we want to be on par with WoW we'd be able to change everything but race and name but maybe asking gender to be changeable with gil is asking too much.

Expanding the aesthetician would resolve the Hrothgar problem and make it everyone else happy.

[Belauron]

Hairstyles are needed for Hrothgars asap

I knew about the hat issue when I change my guy to one so will live with it and hope some do come up in the future, however, for me, JOB gear should fit whichever race you play from head to toe.
Dungeon gear comes and goes but your Job Class set should be made to fit everyone and this is coming from an RDM who can't even wear his hat

[Yencat]

It's as they said before about how they did Hrothgar's entire head - the Hair basically IS the head.

Hrothgar hair isn't actually attached to the head at all, the head and the hair are separate models so in that sense they work pretty much the same as for every other race. There's no real reason for them to be the way they are right now outside of the wacky world of design decisions.

[Reyketi]

Except that's exactly what it is.

And there isn't anything wrong with it.

They've been profiting all along

Well, they've been meeting someone's demands, then, haven't they?

SE would have been far better off never adding Viera and Hrothgar

Perhaps, but it's irrelevant.

[reivaxe]

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.

Like I said, I disagree with how they implemented these races. But to me there's no real point living in the land of Shoulda-Coulda, it is what it is ... it's a core design decision they're not going to change and we can only hope that if they make the counterparts they do something different that's less limiting and learns from the backlash.

Like ... the Viera as is are atrociously bad from a character design PoV in a MMO setting. They suffer from twining because they have human skin colors + Gray and the only thing that makes them different from what's in the game already is their ears. So they effectively put in a race of humans that have only a FRACTION of the hair styles as any other race before it (and of these 8 hair styles most land on using the same popular 3 "best looking ones"), gave them 4 ears (only 2 of which are commonly used, 1 is objectively ugly cause of lack of animation) and took away the option to use hats and helms to change the shape of their head. They're basically the least visually diverse option in this game and once they thought about the limits they would have the Devs/ YP should have pulled the plug on them, either going back to making full Hrothgar or just made up a bunny like race that uses the Miqote head and told people "Yeah, we decided to make these new FF14 races inspired by the Viera and Ronso". (Seems clear to me that many people would have been happy af at just getting an updated Miqote with longer, Spiggan like ears and a fat fluffy Happy Bunny tail they can customize).

But that doesn't make a difference anymore so ehh, it's a fuck up that may only be changed in some kinda "FF14: Part 2" sequel, or maybe they will find some way to make a system they're ok with to allow for hats and helms (I'm sure most hrothgar wouldn't mind their manes going away when they wear a hat and maybe Viera players wouldn't whine about getting stock ears that poke downward from underneath the brim of a hat).

[Yencat]

Like I said, I disagree with how they implemented these races. But to me there's no real point living in the land of Shoulda-Coulda, it is what it is ...

Maybe not, but that was basically the point of the thread so that's what I responded to.

If they can't give them headgear there are still other things they can do to alleviate the feeling that you're playing totally busted races, there's no reason they can't still do this and they've said as much themselves.

Now whether that statement was just to placate players or they actually want/intend to do something about it remains to be seen.