Possible Ideas to Address Hrothgar/Viera Hat Disparity?

[reivaxe]

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

I thought the point of this thread was " Possible Ideas to Address Hrothgar/Viera Hat Disparity" and not to live in the shoulda-coulda lands. Like I said, I think they were poorly implemented with everything set up against them adding head stuff later ... but nothing can really come from being stuck on that and I didn't think of this thread as a "What could they do besides adding hats to help this half baked race?". The devs did what they did, leaving a fat hurdle to jump over if they decide to do it.

This was and has always been my answer to how they could get hats to work ...
"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)."

As in this.
(shit 3:30am drawing but w/e, visuals work better)


Make a pair of stock ears and have them be a part of the "hat hair model" or hat model. Boom, no having to alter models for holes in 100s or 1000s of hats that were never made to have holes in them, no comically large "ear socks/ mittens". Just turn off the ears, plop a large hat on and make the "culled hair model" have 2 ears sticking outta the bottom like this or have them attached to the hat like that. They have shown that they make custom head gear for other races often ... they just don't make more than 1.

So yeah, either they disregard the 4 types of ears to make this idea work OR they make ... 4 different types of hat hair models or hats to make this idea work. Tis the problem. But it's by all means a viable idea that could work with how things currently are as far as I know.
(Hrothgar are easy, just turn off mane.)

But who knows if even that could work. Even when they give Viera hoods things go bonkers outside of it looking like trash (like the Bozja Aiming hood. Last I checked for w/e reason the goggles float through the ears when you visor on Viera ... IDK what kinda spaghetti code they're dealing with but this is my best crack at it)

[kaynide]

This isn't a charity, it's a game for profit, if they want to continue to profit, they will meet their customer's demands.

Just wanted to note that it goes both ways. The devs are on record saying a majority of the headgear that DOES work was done on voluntary time, not actual salaried/paid time (same as Doman Mahjong).

That should tell you one if not two things:
1) The devs are being charitable with their time to make something they hope the players will appreciate.
2) The devs and management are making it clear the whole helms-for-viera thing is not worth their time on the clock to complete.

[Yencat]

<snip>

This thread has been full of suggestions ranging from just letting things clip, to not bothering with hats at all and just giving more hair, to even outright deleting the races (lol), so I'm not sure what it is about my posts that stands out so much for being off-topic?

I definitely wouldn't be opposed to having a pair of stock ears hanging down under a hat, but as was discussed earlier in the thread certain Viera hairstyles (like the one with the black helmet baked into it and it's 2 clones) would be very difficult to partially cull or squish to make the hat sit properly without stretching the texture unless they make one universal "hat-hair" with the stock hanging ears.

That's when some of the posts veered off into what other things they could do if they couldn't work with the hairstyles.

It all hinges on how stubborn they are about their no-hats stance. If they're open to making hats work then by all means I'm all for your suggestion, if not then giving other customization options such as more ears/hair/manes/whatever to make up for it is another option.

At the end of the day it's not like they come here looking here for suggestions anyway so it's all speculating and theorizing either way.

[Raikai]

I thought the point of this thread was " Possible Ideas to Address Hrothgar/Viera Hat Disparity" and not to live in the shoulda-coulda lands. Like I said, I think they were poorly implemented with everything set up against them adding head stuff later ... but nothing can really come from being stuck on that and I didn't think of this thread as a "What could they do besides adding hats to help this half baked race?". The devs did what they did, leaving a fat hurdle to jump over if they decide to do it.

This was and has always been my answer to how they could get hats to work ...
"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)."

As in this.
(shit 3:30am drawing but w/e, visuals work better)


Make a pair of stock ears and have them be a part of the "hat hair model" or hat model. Boom, no having to alter models for holes in 100s or 1000s of hats that were never made to have holes in them, no comically large "ear socks/ mittens". Just turn off the ears, plop a large hat on and make the "culled hair model" have 2 ears sticking outta the bottom like this or have them attached to the hat like that. They have shown that they make custom head gear for other races often ... they just don't make more than 1.

So yeah, either they disregard the 4 types of ears to make this idea work OR they make ... 4 different types of hat hair models or hats to make this idea work. Tis the problem. But it's by all means a viable idea that could work with how things currently are as far as I know.
(Hrothgar are easy, just turn off mane.)

But who knows if even that could work. Even when they give Viera hoods things go bonkers outside of it looking like trash (like the Bozja Aiming hood. Last I checked for w/e reason the goggles float through the ears when you visor on Viera ... IDK what kinda spaghetti code they're dealing with but this is my best crack at it)

I like the idea of the ears down to avoid clipping issues through the ear length x tall helms, but in both examples you drew (esp. the cap, that is as flat as it can get), it would be perfectly fine to have the holes on top of the hats though!

[reivaxe]

I like the idea of the ears down to avoid clipping issues through the ear length x tall helms, but in both examples you drew (esp. the cap, that is as flat as it can get), it would be perfectly fine to have the holes on top of the hats though!

Top hat would look tragic with the "Bent ears" and the point is that these hats/ helms were never designed to have "holes on top". It's not an easy task to do, would require making custom versions of hats with custom textures and such which is 1 of the problems.

Tis why I say just have them fit this way. Now, would they disregard the fact that there's 4 types of ears or would they make 4 different versions? No idea, leaning towards it being a no to them cause they would not disregard the player's choice in ear shape and they will not make 4 custom versions of every hat hair model just for Viera.

This thread has been full of suggestions ranging from just letting things clip, to not bothering with hats at all and just giving more hair, to even outright deleting the races (lol), so I'm not sure what it is about my posts that stands out so much for being off-topic?

Never said anything was off-topic, just that it's pointless to focus on how things coulda or shoulda been different over thinking of ways to fix what the devs gave us.

Adding 4 more ears isn't going to do much about the core problem with the race having the least amount of visual diversity, their ears are basically knives that stick out of their skull with lil to zero animation and people already ignore 2 of the 4 options cause they're not "cute". Adding twice the amount of hair for a whooping 16 unique styles would only really be a ban-aid at best that wears off once people notice that they all settled on the same ones again (assuming they even do twice the amount. They could easily just do 4, they are strangely frugal with making hair styles).

Another idea I had, sparked by Fox's wording the last time they spoke about it (that they were looking into ways to make some helms (Not HATS, helms) that are unique to Viera) made me think that they may simply pull a "Fran hair". As in, take some other hair styles and make a "Viera Helm" version like this with Mjrn. So basically they just bake a few helms into some Viera hairstyles so that for 2k gil you can either rock the reg hair version or the helm version of that style. Would be inline with how you have the bangs or no bangs version and it's already a thing in game with Fran hair. Could actually do something about the diversity in appearance as even if they can't wear reg hats or helms they have the option for Viera ONLY helms with their hair that can be mixed and matched with head gear they already can wear.

Might be the best option TBH. Though I think my hat idea works it would only really work in a world where they're ok with just ignoring player choice OR in a world where they're willing to put that much effort and memory into a single race just to allow them to have something they told people they wouldn't have. Actually running with the Fran hair idea to give people some helms that are unique to Viera's unique hair styles could be the best bet for "head gear" for this race.

[Yencat]

Apparently Yoshida did a surprise Q&A on the Chocobo server on New Years day and someone asked about Viera & Hrothgar headgear:

Q: Can we get 100% support on all headgear for Viera and Hrothgar?
A: In regards to headgear for those races, due to the unique ears and faces it will be impossible to implement 100% support. I am sorry.

Not exactly news and this probably won't shock or surprise anyone, but optimistically I don't think many people were ever expecting 100% to work so if they're actually trying to make a couple more work that is an improvement to what we have now.

"Not 100%" is pretty ambiguous though and it could just as well mean that they're content with the type of items that already work now and there won't be more, so make of that what you will.

On the other hand though it seems safe now to rule out that they're trying or looking for some sort of blanket solution to solve the issue entirely, so if anyone was holding out hope for that I guess this is it. It's probably not actually impossible but it'd clearly be a lot of work and too much of a headache to bother with.

Someone posted a couple of questions they caught to Reddit and I thought I'd post this one here since it's the most recent statement on the topic, even if it's what most people probably expected.

[Raikai]

Top hat would look tragic with the "Bent ears" and the point is that these hats/ helms were never designed to have "holes on top". It's not an easy task to do, would require making custom versions of hats with custom textures and such which is 1 of the problems.

Tis why I say just have them fit this way. Now, would they disregard the fact that there's 4 types of ears or would they make 4 different versions? No idea, leaning towards it being a no to them cause they would not disregard the player's choice in ear shape and they will not make 4 custom versions of every hat hair model just for Viera.

Oh, I totally get it, and I really like your solution, top hat included on that, but just not the examples you drew... Especially the cap. It actually would look quite hard to keep the stifeness of the ears not pulling them back because a cap is just... a cap lol.

[Raikai]

Apparently Yoshida did a surprise Q&A on the Chocobo server on New Years day and someone asked about Viera & Hrothgar headgear:



Not exactly news and this probably won't shock or surprise anyone, but optimistically I don't think many people were ever expecting 100% to work so if they're actually trying to make a couple more work that is an improvement to what we have now.

"Not 100%" is pretty ambiguous though and it could just as well mean that they're content with the type of items that already work now and there won't be more, so make of that what you will.

On the other though hand it seems safe now to rule out that they're trying or looking for some sort of blanket solution to solve the issue entirely, so if anyone was holding out hope for that I guess this is it. It's probably not actually impossible but it'd clearly be a lot of work and too much of a headache to bother with.

Someone posted a couple of questions they caught to Reddit and I thought I'd post this one here since it's the most recent statement on the topic, even if it's what most people probably expected.

Yeah! I really hope that this "not 100%" quote means that they are at least try to give some options, because let's face it, there are some hats that wouldn't affect neither the ears or the Hrothgar unique faces at all, regarding the 3D model.

Even if we got like just 15 old hat models (and their color/texture variants) adapted, still would be light years better than simply have nothing

[SturmChurro]

Apparently Yoshida did a surprise Q&A on the Chocobo server on New Years day and someone asked about Viera & Hrothgar headgear:



Not exactly news and this probably won't shock or surprise anyone, but optimistically I don't think many people were ever expecting 100% to work so if they're actually trying to make a couple more work that is an improvement to what we have now.

"Not 100%" is pretty ambiguous though and it could just as well mean that they're content with the type of items that already work now and there won't be more, so make of that what you will.

On the other hand though it seems safe now to rule out that they're trying or looking for some sort of blanket solution to solve the issue entirely, so if anyone was holding out hope for that I guess this is it. It's probably not actually impossible but it'd clearly be a lot of work and too much of a headache to bother with.

Someone posted a couple of questions they caught to Reddit and I thought I'd post this one here since it's the most recent statement on the topic, even if it's what most people probably expected.

Just a more current update of their same stance on the subject. The problem with that question is they asked "headgear" rather than hats. Viera already have support for headgear that isn't hats! Nothing new was learned! The community had a chance and blew it with that question!

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Q: Can we get 100% support on all headgear for Viera and Hrothgar?
A: In regards to headgear for those races, due to the unique ears and faces it will be impossible to implement 100% support. I am sorry.

Well...yeah. Hrothgar don't have human faces, so there is no way to make gear 100% compatible. They would need to make new versions of alot of headpeices to get it to fit the Hrothgar head. Viera....besides some gear like I guess helmets...I dont know their excuse with alot of headgear. Maybe its personal choice that they dont ears to clip, but still gotta wonder why newer gear doesnt have built in earholes.
Heres to hoping in 6.0 they manage to make some headgear for both races that will be compatible.