Viera and Hrothgar Megathread

[Akimori]

IIRC when a reporter recently asked YP flat out about Viera and Hrothgar head stuff (in a question about new genders and races) he strongly implied people should look forward to May fan-fest about the head stuff.

So I'm assuming you will hear something there.

If I remember correctly: when people asked about Male viera after Hroth and Fem viera were revealed a month before, he told them "Look forward to fanfest"...somewhere along that line, which effectively built an insane amount of hype, only to say "We're not doing this because the costs are too high" which...uhh...crashed and burned hard afterwards.

Now, one can say, that was just the players' own misinterpretation of his words, but he also could have come along to deny it at anytime which probably wouldn't have made that LL a literal crapstorm. Instead, he let the players theorize and build hype for over a month just before coming in like a WREEEEEECKING BAAAAAAAALLLL and absolutely obliterating something that players really really wanted. So, after that stunt, Im kind of skeptical about getting my hopes up that something regarding hroth and viera customization being revealed during Fanfest or that LL

[TW-Luna]

What more is there to say? At this point modders have effectively jury-rigged a solutions to a problem that Square has officially and unofficially refused to even acknowledge for two years now. But modding is bad, right guys?

Say what you will about the quality of the work, but it's pretty jarring when you see that.. eeeh.. I'd say +85% of all helms in the game looks just fine on Viera/Hrothgar after just checking a box in the metadata of the helm. There are some helms, at least for Viera, that are very tight to the head and cause a situation where the ears float above the top of the helm; but I'd say that's about 10% of all helms at most. (Examples off the top of my head are the Judge helms from Bozja) Honestly, it feels like most of the issue was just making Viera hair compatible for helms, which a couple of separate modders have tackled. Creating versions that pad down the hair when a helm is showing.

Now, Square never said to expect helms, but it would be nice to have an explanation as to why it is such an impossibility yet people in their free time are solving the problem. What I WILL hold Square accountable for, though, is absolutely no new hairstyles for either race all expansion and not a freaking peep about it either. We were promised more hairstyles and even the wording during that statement was nebulous enough to wonder if he meant old purchasable hairstyles would be included. But no, nada, nothing. Not one iota of a comment on Viera or Hrothgar.

[MariaArvana]

Now, Square never said to expect helms, but it would be nice to have an explanation as to why it is such an impossibility yet people in their free time are solving the problem.

Because modders aren't restricted by milestones, deadlines or a boss that directly tells you what you can and can't work on, or has to review your work each time you submit something and can tell you to do it again or veto your work entirely to start over.

Square could no doubt easily fix the Viera/hrothgar helm situation, if they wanted to sacrifice an entire patch's worth of content to do so. The issue comes from the fact that every patch, there's literally hundreds to thousands of brand new models being made with each major patch, and in some cases, entirely brand new zones filled to the brim with assets. A modder can easily make a helmet fit a Viera or make one of the old hairstyles work for Hroth/viera. Ask them to do that along with making a 50 other models in a 3-month window (all of which -have- to be done as a priority over the Viera hair) and they have to submit their work to a master 3D modeler who has very particular standards or they get rejected. it'd be a much different story then.

The only point I'd agree is that they could have made the new hairstyles & helmets working on Viera & Hroth since it wasn't a case of old stuff having to be updated, but new stuff that was being created from scratch anyway. It's never been an issue of money, it's been an issue of workload & time they don't have in their short patch windows. Viera and Hrothgar only got glasses/light headpieces in time for SHB because the 3D modders spent countless man hours of their own free time to do so. That alone should be telling of how tight their workload is. From the very onset of SHB, I called they wouldn't get any updates until 6.0 at the earliest. past history has shown countless times how tight their dev windows are, so its easy to know when to expect something is on the backburner or not if its not mandatory to a major patch release.

My only guess on why they haven't even done new stuff is because they just want to do a blanket all at once release, lest they get even more complaints from people going "but why that helmet and not this one? Why that hair and not this one?".

[TW-Luna]

Square could no doubt easily fix the Viera/hrothgar helm situation, if they wanted to sacrifice an entire patch's worth of content to do so.

There is no correlation here. Giving Viera and Hrothgar hats will not cost a patch worth of content; or to use the meme, "Cost a Raid Tier". (Besides, Square is already doing that themselves with the lack of Beast Tribe capstone among others, but that's a different thread)

And to make clear, the big Viera hats mod out there currently, the person who made that simply went into the metadata of each existing hat and simple clicked a checkbox to turn the hat on, that's it. They didn't do any adjusting of any existing assets. Yes, not every helm and hat looks good like that, but the lion's share certainly does.

[reivaxe]

If I remember correctly: when people asked about Male viera after Hroth and Fem viera were revealed a month before, he told them "Look forward to fanfest"...somewhere along that line, which effectively built an insane amount of hype, only to say "We're not doing this because the costs are too high" which...uhh...crashed and burned hard afterwards.

I mean, sure, I'll bite. Going by your example I guess that could mean he reveals a dozen new hairstyles for every race but Hrothgar and Viera and then go "haha, never gonna happen!". That would be a strange joke given that he's said many a time they're working on hair for these races, asking people to wait for them.

Edit- As for the hat stuff again for the convo going on up there ... no, it's not hard to make hat-hair models. They do that for every version of every hairstyle they release for normal races. And yes, you can just check a box and let them show on the tech side. The reason they don't do it isn't because they're "lazy" or "bad" or "can't do what modders can for some reason". If it's that easy then the only reason can be that they don't want to do that solution because of design reasons like "they think it looks bad" and in order to make it look satisfactory they would have to devote an amount of effort that they don't have to expend for other races.

So the options for Viera are ...
-Make hat-hair, let them ears clip.
-Turn off ears, make the race look like tall, earless humans when they wear hats and some helms.
-Come up with a solution that isn't one of those that also works for all 4 ear types.
-Don't show the types of headgear that give you these problems.
(or prehaps there's some tech reason why the clip option isn't viable, I do remember YP saying how the reason all Hrothgar tail tips are black is that they legit ran outta allocated memory for them or something)

For Hrothgar I have no clue, they just seem to really want "The MANE" to be preserved or something unless it's a hood/ helm that covers it completely, IDK what YP was thinking when he told the devs to not give them reg hair either.

[LisSquid]

To say that male viera and viera hairstyles are in the same arena of "Yoshi P said look forward to it" is disingenuous. They flat out said that the trade-off to not having head pieces and normal hair was unique hairstyles, and that more were in the wings. He danced around the question of male viera because he could not say no (corporate culture differences). Viera hair was talked about in the live letter.

I expect something in May, at the least.

[Vahlnir]

That would be a strange joke given that he's said many a time they're working on hair for these races, asking people to wait for them.

I'd like a source on this. To my knowledge, there has been no indication of this at all.

[Yencat]

I'd like a source on this. To my knowledge, there has been no indication of this at all.

Beat me to it.

People wouldn't be practically begging them to communicate with us if they had.

[LisSquid]

"As for Viera, there's some legacy haristyles they'll able to eventually implement, but not all of them. Some of unlockable hairstyles should be supported, others may not be."
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...shida_summary/

As I was looking for the Fanfest clip about the hat and hair situation, I happened to find that little quote.

[Yencat]

"As for Viera, there's some legacy haristyles they'll able to eventually implement, but not all of them. Some of unlockable hairstyles should be supported, others may not be."
https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...shida_summary/

As I was looking for the Fanfest clip about the hat and hair situation, I happened to find that little quote.

Sadly they walked back that statement later with this:

Q: I used fantasia to change to Viera and I'm enjoying it. As they're a special race and it may not be possible, but feel like the number of hairstyles available for Viera and Hrothgar is quite limited. Do you have plans to add more in the future?
A: We certainly plan on adding more, so please wait for future patches. However, it will still be race-specific, so there won’t be as many selections when compared to other races.

From here: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...808-29-2019%29

Not 100% clear if he's talking about Viera, Hrothgar, or both, in that statement though.