Possible Ideas to Address Hrothgar/Viera Hat Disparity?

[Yencat]

<snip>

What are we even arguing at this point? Even if we're throwing hopes, dreams and theories out the window and only go by the letter of what they actually said they would do we'd arrive at this exact same point. They made their intentions clear to build on the current system they have set up, not to fix anything. Them fixing anything would be a theory or a hope, not something they said they'd do.

Maybe when 6.0 rolls around we can laugh about how people expected them to fix it when clearly they never said anything of the sort?

No, a waste of time is if they made these races and then just delete them later as some people have posted.
Despite the issues there is still a healthy amount of people that still LOVE that Viera are in the game, and some people who are simply happy to finally have a playable Beast Race.
They have Plenty of room to improve (and NEED improvements) but alot of people enjoy them so far, and have been creative enough to work around glamour limitations.
They are not a waste of time.

It was a waste to swap something as insignificant as fur patterns with hair in the CC effectively locking them out of changing those unle$$...
It was a waste tying Viera development in with Hrothgar because you want to be "fair", when by design the Hrothgar system isn't fair and difficult to work with.

The races themselves aren't a waste, the mess they made of them is.

[zeylos]

They should just make female viera hats make their ears be gone when equiped (same for clipping hair) and male hrotgar top part of the head be gone

[Rymi64]

They should just make female viera hats make their ears be gone when equiped (same for clipping hair) and male hrotgar top part of the head be gone

Viera's ears are their most distinct feature if you make them disappear you're kinda reduced to a elezen with no pointy ears (this is an exaggeration of course).

They probably haven't talked about the updates to them since they already have said before that they are working on it and see no need to say it again. Plus with covid they might have just pushed it back to 6.0 just to not rush the team doing it.

[reivaxe]

If Blizzard had done something like this in WoW they would rightfully be a laughing stock and mocked all over the internet and especially on these forums, so you might not be far off the mark. There's no way I believe they started working on Hrothgar first and Viera was a last minute inclusion with how badly they bungled their implementation, they were barely finished to even show at their Fan Fest reveal and they had to hide them with dark filters while they kept working on them..

Once again being lazy in the moment, but I think it was said in a video/interview or whatever, that Hrothgar WERE in fact planned before Viera. They wanted to put in a playable Beast Race to mix things up, every playable race is just basically another human, a Beast race is a non-human option. Plus apparently the Lupin were well received and people were upset they weren't playable.
Viera only really happened because, as YoshiP has actually said, "This might be our last chance to make new races for the game. So we wanted to fulfill 2 requests"

They have explicitly said Hrothgar was decided on first so this is an odd take. Like, Viera imo are just as "bungled" if not more because of how popular they are (reeeeaaaly highlights the tiny amount of customization compared to any other race when there's tons of people playing the race. Like the reserve of how even though it feels like 96% of Femroe use Face 2 they're so rare that you don't care).
Why were they shown and ready first? Cause shockingly being a race that's basically tall meddies with bunny ears and next to zero emote animations is faster to make than the first beast race with animal heads and huuuugely expressive emotes and such.

Like, all you have to do is look at the game. Gnb story line is heavily tied to Hrothgar lore. Half the important Hrothgar having their wife and kids just gone for no real reason. Bozja's whole story being connected to the events in MSQ and about Hrothgar Queen drama with abrupt stand ins for female Hrothgars. They flat out show us art of female Hrothgar. Everything going on with Bozja and Gnb story had to be thought out and started long ago, couldn't be a last min thing.

Viera though? They're just kinda ... there for now. I have a feeling we will learn more about them in 6.0 but yeah, as it stands they don't have a whole relic quest about reclaiming their home land with tons of lore dumps about it.

As for the 2B butt stuff, as it's been said it's because it was a mess up on their part that undermined the entire point of the gear (to give people bigger asses cause that request was the reason they made those high poly butts in the first place). They made these 2 races with the core concept of "Screw head gear and hair!" so it was not a mistake.

Also people need to put away the tin-foil. There is no way they make more money off Hrothgar with the potion system for changing hair. If anything it makes the race far faaaar less appealing to begin with. It's really a credit to the appeal of the race that they're "Highlander popular" with this non-sense. They could have given them reg hair but YP was too into his idea of unique heads and told them that's not what they're doing.

[Yencat]

As for the 2B butt stuff, as it's been said it's because it was a mess up on their part that undermined the entire point of the gear (to give people bigger asses cause that request was the reason they made those high poly butts in the first place). They made these 2 races with the core concept of "Screw head gear and hair!" so it was not a mistake.

Just to be clear, I didn't bring up the 2B butt as an example of how they can fix things fast and should do the same for Viera/Hrothgar, I know they're not even in the same league. I brought it up because they released a statement on it very quickly.

IF they were putting their heads down and working on a fix like Zanarkand-Ronso was suggesting they could have just as easily said something to that effect, but they don't and they didn't so the races are what they are and I don't see any major fixes coming their way beyond maybe adding some stuff in 6.0. I think it's a waste they did it the way they did but nothing about Viera and Hrothgar being in this state was a mistake, it was a conscious decision.

It would be nice if they could look at ways to better integrate them in the development cycle of hair and/or hats like the other races, but going by their own statements they've made thus far they have no such intentions and it's wishful thinking.

[reivaxe]

Viera and Hrothgar being in this state was a mistake, it was a conscious decision.

It would be nice if they could look at ways to better integrate them in the development cycle of hair and/or hats like the other races, but going by their own statements they've made thus far they have no such intentions and it's wishful thinking.

I agree, there's nothing for them to "fix" cause nothing's broken. They designed them this way with seemingly zero interest in going back and changing that. They pretty much said that when they last talked about working on a way to get some helms that are unique to Viera in the game by saying basically "Yeah, we're looking into it but ... we DID tell you they're not getting that stuff for a reason so yeah".

Like I've said many a time, I think the choices in limiting these races this way was a very poorly thought out decision and tbh if they ever bother making the other genders I do feel like they will change this for them. But as it stands I think both Viera Females and Hrothgar males are doomed to have to deal with this screwed up decision.

[Iscah]

You're spot on about the CC being the most likely problem for Hrothgar though. I'm assuming they can change their fur pattern and colour at the aesthetician since it's in the same spot as hairstyles/hair colour normally go for races without a muscle slider, so I guess for all intents and purposes they have fur patterns instead of hair.

So unless they're thinking about (and it's even a possibility) exchanging the fur patterns with the hair and having fur patterns be Fantasia only instead of the hair or revamping how limited the settings in character creation are, then they're probably screwed in terms of more hairstyles unless they somehow get really creative. And Viera with them if they intend to keep it even-steven between them.

It looks to me that to implement colour-customisable fur patterns as they did, it has to go in the hairstyle slot so it can interact with the standard "hair + highlights colour" setting.

Basically, "getting creative" with how the settings apply to the character is how we got here. It seems like they decided they wanted a specific effect, and that it would be okay to sacrifice other usual types of customisation to achieve that effect.

(I suspect the creators might not have the mindset of people regularly changing their character's appearance.)

An alternative might have been tying patterns to specific hairstyles.

Also call it tinfoil hat theory but if Hrothgars needing Fantasia was a deliberate choice as "compensation" because they knew it wouldn't be a popular race then SE would outrank Blizz and EA in scummy business models.

Compensation... where? For what?

Who's getting compensation in this scenario?

I think that whole hrothgar "first" thing is a bit suspicious. Considering viera were the ones on the billboards, and everytime I saw an ad online it was a viera, and largely when it came to ShB I saw viera NOT hrothgar. The whole concept of "Oh, viera were just a handout for the people who wanted it" doesn't really fit..

From a lore perspective, I think "Hrothgar first" makes a lot of sense. There's Bozja for a start, and I have to wonder if that started being written with the intent that female Hrothgar would be available for the starring role.

Also, as much as the "jungle tribe" setup of the Viera/Viis in Rak'tika fits with Viera lore, I have to wonder about that too. A connection is drawn between the Ronka empire and the Ronso race, and it would make sense if the tribe currently living there is the remnant of it.

Of course once they decided to do fan-favourite Viera they're going to promote it all they can, but that doesn't prove that they had it in mind from the start.

[Yencat]

I suspect the creators might not have the mindset of people regularly changing their character's appearance.

You might be on to something here, but you'd think with how often people ask for new hairstyles and the fact that they keep releasing them with some frequency would give them some inkling people really like to change their appearance, or at least their hair? Maybe they even have metrics for how often the aesthetician is used?

And if they themselves don't care then why take the choice away from your players who, unsurprisingly, are now very upset. I know you can't answer that either but I just can't wrap my head around it.

Compensation... where? For what?

Who's getting compensation in this scenario?

I must not have read his post close enough the first time because I also don't know what he means by compensation (the only one getting compensated by this is SE) but I think he's 100% correct in feeling like they felt more comfortable doing something experimental and possibly(definitely) unpopular with Hrothgar rather than Viera.

If Viera had to buy a Fantasia to change their hair everyone would have lost their minds, but with Hrothgar being less played it never gained much traction.

Viera definitely ended up getting the better end of the deal but are still treated or at least considered by the devs as just as "unique" as Hrothgar, even though they have no unique or new customization options at all, so in the end everyone loses.

(I'm personally not counting the bangs/no bangs clone hair as unique because while Viera is the only one that has it right now and it's nice, it just falls under hairstyles and feels more like a way to pad the number of available hairstyles than unique customization.)

[Kyeria]

You're still misunderstanding what he's saying.

He's not talking about SE using someone else's original hairstyle designs or saying people should use mods as a solution, he's saying Joe Schmoe has figured out how to make almost every hairstyle currently available in the game usable by both Hrothgar and Viera. Even the ones that are locked to other faces for Hrothgar.

Now if Joe Schmoe can do all that in his spare time how can you make excuses for a company with the resources SE has to not put out a single thing in all this time?

If you had argued there's a different standard of quality for mods or that Joe Schmoe doesn't have the workload the devs do I actually might have somewhat agreed, but that wasn't your argument.

But even then, not a single thing in +/- 17 months?

Thank you for this. I have no idea how this was not made clear after my second post, but you summed it up perfectly.

[ICountFrom0]

The solution would be for squenix to buy the rights to the process from "joe" for a dollar.
As it is "Joe" will probably get a cease and desist.