Viera and Hrothgar Megathread

[Akimori]

Since I dont play with the aesthetician as much as a hrothgar (for obvious reasons), I decided to try it anyway today and found that I could change my patterns via that NPC?......I can....change my patterns (stripes, spots, nothing, etc) via the aesthetician, but....not my hairstyle.....

.....What?

[Yencat]

Since I dont play with the aesthetician as much as a hrothgar (for obvious reasons), I decided to try it anyway today and found that I could change my patterns via that NPC?......I can....change my patterns (stripes, spots, nothing, etc) via the aesthetician, but....not my hairstyle.....

.....What?

Yeah it seems like the patterns are in the spot hairstyles would normally go, so you can freely change those.

They either couldn't work out how to modify all 8 hairstyles to work for every head, or they didn't think it was necessary and patterns would be enough "unique customization" to justify it.

Like LisSquid said, hopefully the reason it's taking so long is because they've heard the feedback and are working on fixing that. But the fact they even though it was a good idea to release them like that in the first place isn't very encouraging.

[Akimori]

Yeah it seems like the patterns are in the spot hairstyles would normally go, so you can freely change those.

They either couldn't work out how to modify all 8 hairstyles to work for every head, or they didn't think it was necessary and patterns would be enough "unique customization" to justify it.

Like LisSquid said, hopefully the reason it's taking so long is because they've heard the feedback and are working on fixing that. But the fact they even though it was a good idea to release them like that in the first place isn't very encouraging.

with only like 5 patterns, thats hardly "unique customization" haha. Im going to assume its the former, but I do remember thenm showing off hroth for the first time and it had a hroth that was using the couerl face, but had the runar hairstyle attached to it, so I dont even know anymore

[Yencat]

with only like 5 patterns, thats hardly "unique customization" haha. Im going to assume its the former, but I do remember thenm showing off hroth for the first time and it had a hroth that was using the couerl face, but had the runar hairstyle attached to it, so I dont even know anymore.

I completely agree it's not a good substitute for changing your hair at all. Unless you're shirtless 24/7 (no judgement from me there. ) you can't even see it.

That image probably either means they originally intended for more hairstyle+face combos and they had to pivot later on for whatever reason, or they just threw something together to have the image to show before the race was actually completely finished?

IIRC they finished them just before they showed them off, and even then they still had to do some polishing on them before release.

[Akimori]

I completely agree it's not a good substitute for changing your hair at all. Unless you're shirtless 24/7 (no judgement from me there. ) you can't even see it.

That image probably either means they originally intended for more hairstyle+face combos and they had to pivot later on for whatever reason, or they just threw something together to have the image to show before the race was actually completely finished?

IIRC they finished them just before they showed them off, and even then they still had to do some polishing on them before release.

Id go shirtless 24/7, but this game has some really nice shirts/tanktops that I love wearing T_T

If your first statement is true about them having to change it later down the line for whatever technical limitations they're running into, I wish they were a bit more transparent about it....It would definitely quell a lot of the frustration everyone is facing (yoshi's team included). I mean, they were more transparent on why M.Viera/F. Hrothgars weren't going to be a thing at ShB release (but he has made hints that he wants to do them later down the road) because of the rising costs of development. So, the fact that hes more hush hush about hairstyles (especially since this expansion has seen its fair share of hairstyle releases for other races) and even the newer glamour items, its a bit unsettling. Im just really holding onto the slim fact that the keynote this saturday will shed some light on this entire debacle. I especially hope it sheds some light on why the team decided to make Hrothgar players have to pay real $$$ to do something that literally every other race can do for free. Changing the patters should be something you spend actual money on since you're changing something on your character thats not meant to be changed (a real tiger cant change its stripes at will.) while the hairstyle can be changed to anything you want/whenever you want.

One could say that they were more transparent about Viera because of the shapes of their head, but uh....modders messing with metadata has proven that viera heads are extremely similar to every other head minus their ears. Hrothgars have a bit of a different story, but once again, modders have proved the Dev team wrong...again...

If your second statement is true, its kind of scummy for them to show off something that was never intended to be attainable anyway, because I'll once again go back to the statement of being able to create a lot of unique characters out of these two races and players more often than not (Hroth's more due to their customization being even more limited than Viera's) running into their twins in game.

Yea, I remember the first reveal and how excited I was for them, but I do remember them definitely looking unfinished and that they had a few months to get them ready for the players to mess around with

[WhiteArchmage]

snip

I BELIEVE they may have intended for Hairstyles to be customizable at the start; but I remember that some people were picking apart their promotional image and how one of the hairstyles clipped with the ear, and compaining how it meant the Hroths were rushed and whatnot (which... I mean... not inaccurate, we know they were rushed, they were literally only finished to show on FanFest like, a day or a week before, I forget).

I wouldn't be surprised if, pressed for time, the dev team decided hairstyles would be tied to faces and that would stop complaints about clipping, but it's still a baffling style decision.

...which wouldn't be the first baffling design decision, considering how I've mentioned Viera ears are different than FFXII/FFTA Viera ears in a way that makes hats MORE DIFFICULT to model, which means the dev team essentially shot themselves on the foot for no good reason.

[Yencat]

I wouldn't be surprised if, pressed for time, the dev team decided hairstyles would be tied to faces and that would stop complaints about clipping, but it's still a baffling style decision.

It's not impossible, but I'd be very surprised if they made such a big change that late in development. And only because a few people said it clips? People have complained about clipping for as long as the game's been out and new stuff still clips, I don't think they care that much.

I vaguely remember they did make some alteration to that image later on though? Like they moved the hair a bit so it didn't clip through the ear and changed the teeth or something? Does anyone else remember that or did I make that up.

EDIT: nvm, I found the image and they just changed it to be the "correct" head to go with the hair.