New hrothgar hairstyles are really bad.

[Jason_Ashford]

It's not an April Fools joke. They wouldn't do that. Sadly what you see is what you get. As I mentioned earlier given the reception they should pull the release and fix it so they don't have to pull it later. There are people who will like it and then it becomes harder to change.

the general sentiment has been extremely negative and outraged. i don't know of a single person who said "oooh! earless cats! what a novel idea! 2B Hair on a Hrothgar? Sign me up!" What worries me however is the absolute silence on their part. usually they'd come out with a statement, an apology, or something. Also i noticed a very distinct absence of any sort of mention of the Hrothgar hairstyles on the Twitter official page which was releasing information on everything that was covered in the LL. So it definitely stood out that it got no mention whatsoever.

[Akimori]

the general sentiment has been extremely negative and outraged. i don't know of a single person who said "oooh! earless cats! what a novel idea! 2B Hair on a Hrothgar? Sign me up!" What worries me however is the absolute silence on their part. usually they'd come out with a statement, an apology, or something. Also i noticed a very distinct absence of any sort of mention of the Hrothgar hairstyles on the Twitter official page which was releasing information on everything that was covered in the LL. So it definitely stood out that it got no mention whatsoever.

Thats actually something I told my BF when I got out of class on that Friday morning. I was like "Hey. Check the FFXIV_EN twitter page. Its not even listed on there...." another friend said they may have been embarrassed about the general reception of it, but of course there would be backlash. They *removed* a literal body part of a race and tried to play it off as "LMFAO its hiding under the hair".

[Midareyukki]

All of this is tempering my own rage, as nothing about this presentation is making any sense. If there can be teleporting underground bots, then how difficult would it be to make hair and hat mods than can be seen by other players? A personal opinion that I have as well is that usually when something is presented that can be perceived as controversial, then there would be an apology in some form or another. However, there was neither an apology within the live letter, nor after it. All of this has me, at the very least, suspicious of the whole thing. So I will wait until the release of 6.1 before taking any action. If this turns out to be real, then my actions will most likely be rage-induced and reflectively regrettable.

Traditionally, you're meant to inform people it was an April's fool prank.

But honestly, despite this not making any sense as you said, I don't know? Like, it's not normal for them to go out of their way like this to make something that they'll just discard. It looks like they had a lot of effort into changing how ears work just for this. It feels like it's real, it has every indication that it is real. Surely we've had heard something about it by now if it weren't, no?

[Shibi]

I think the time of day should be the hint that it wasn't an April Fool.

Yoshi held those up at about 10pm their time (well after Midday JP time), 1/4 of the planet was already on the 2nd of April.

[Azazel_Grim]

At first, my reaction was the same as everyone else (confusion and outrage), but I decided to look a little deeper into it and found some things to be a bit odd. Right now this is a compilation of all the information that was found:

1. It was the 70th Producer Live Letter (PLL) to be broadcasted, but it was the first of the PLLs to be broadcasted on April 1st. There are no other examples of what they would do in this particular scenario.



2. What they showed were printouts of Hrothgar with different hairstyles rather than a demonstration of how the hairstyles would look in the game. I point this out because it's not just an aesthetic implementation but also a technical one, as Hrothgars don't even have a menu for hairstyles, and it would have made logical sense to show that menu addition as well.



3. All of the hairstyles that were presented in the printouts were most definitely not presentable first choices.



4. The Hrothgar ears are part of the head more so than the hair. In order for what was seen to exist, they would of had to model new heads with ears that would be toggled off visibly when changing to those hairstyles. If there was a decision made that would be called lazy, then it would be to just add the hairstyles menu, slap on the Roegadyn hairstyles and call it a day, which would have actually been far more presentable. If what they showed was actually in game presentations, then it would have taken more time and effort to do it. This has me speculating of the probability that those printouts were photoshopped or purposefully forged in some way.







All of this is tempering my own rage, as nothing about this presentation is making any sense. If there can be teleporting underground bots, then how difficult would it be to make hair and hat mods than can be seen by other players? A personal opinion that I have as well is that usually when something is presented that can be perceived as controversial, then there would be an apology in some form or another. However, there was neither an apology within the live letter, nor after it. All of this has me, at the very least, suspicious of the whole thing. So I will wait until the release of 6.1 before taking any action. If this turns out to be real, then my actions will most likely be rage-induced and reflectively regrettable.

You do make a very good point. I truly hope you are correct, but its hard to believe because it feels like I'm high with copium

[Zerard]

It's unfortunate but if it were actually an April Fools joke, Yoshida would have immediately followed up the reveal of these hairstyles with 'April Fools! These aren't actually real in game representations.' It'd be pretty bad to keep a joke going for this long.

That aside as hrothgar player myself it truly is disappointing. Both the hairsyles and the dev team's stance on it. I cant help but wonder if hrothgar were as popular of a race as say... viera, would the limitations still be as prevalent as they say they are?

[Atelier-Bagur]

Same. I would go Lala before I went Roe.

alright lets cut back the roe hate here. There's nothing wrong with roegadyn, although this is my personal take since I play roegadyn on my main and to me theyre the best race in this game

THAT BEING SAID, this is just asinine on the dev team. I dont play Hrothgar nor am I that interested in the race but even I think this is just insulting. Hrothgar players have been waiting years for hairstyles or at least have better freedom to swap current hairs without resorting to fantasia and I was just laughing off my seat when yoshida showed these pictures. Its awful. No Hrothgar player will ever accept this and from the looks of it this sure aint it chief!

Im so sorry for you guys, I seriously hope the backlash for this is strong enough to force the devs to do these better. At the very least give them their ears back!

[Alieno]

The fact that they were laughing while showing them off... They know they look awful, but still went with it. Pretty disrespectful to many of us if you ask me.

[Oizen]

Its always funny to me to see Square Enix hold itself in such a high, borderline conceited way but then when it comes to putting effort into their biggest game they cant even put hair on a cat man properly.

[Midareyukki]

alright lets cut back the roe hate here. There's nothing wrong with roegadyn, although this is my personal take since I play roegadyn on my main and to me theyre the best race in this game

Roes too deserve better both in-game and in the community. Sincerely, someone who played Roegadyn up until they released Hrothgar.

Really guys, no one cares about whether or not you would go X race over Y, that isn't the point of this channel and it's just completely uncalled for. Because remember, this may be happening to Hrothgars, but if the standards keep being lowered, one day it may happen to you. And even if it won't, if it could happen to you, you definitely wouldn't want people bashing on your choices like this.

The fact that they were laughing while showing them off... They know they look awful, but still went with it. Pretty disrespectful to many of us if you ask me.

My friend says that Yoshida looking aside each time and simply chuckling rather than actual laughter should be an indication that he's not happy with what he had to present. But at the same time, I am wondering about that. Yoshida does have to approve what gets done, and we know that he's fairly controlling about their work and when they do it. Which makes me question... either, somehow, Yoshida approved something he didn't want, or he just had to make do with what little they could do.

Which maybe it means that they didn't have time to do this? But if that's the case, it goes against what we're told their normal workflow is, where things tend to be looked over at least once before approval. Meaning someone decided on this, someone made this and someone approved of this. If they're understaffed, they should have had foresight before saying they'd implement these things. Which are decisions that have been going around since 5.55 iirc? If they just didn't have time, then it's still a weird lack of foresight because it means they didn't allocate the proper time or resources into making this.

One thing is certain. Some level of quality assurance failed here, unless this is somehow seen as acceptable to them. Which given what I heard about Yoshida's reaction, them thinking it's acceptable doesn't add up. So it's really hard to understand whether he's not happy with the result or if he was knowingly laughing at how bad the end result was and shrugging it off.

I don't know, something isn't quite right with this whole situation. I'm just trying to understand what could have happened before criticizing people any further. Especially since I under no circumstance know what their actual policy or workflow is.

And one more thing about all this. Hrothgar hairstyles didn't even get posted in the main FFXIV Twitter account, @FF_XIV_EN. There's no mention of them there at all. So either they once again neglected Hrothgars, or they know they're not presentable.