New hrothgar hairstyles are really bad.

[aveyond-dreams]

Believe what you want, I do not have the time to skim through each comment that proceeded to argue about what I specifically said I had no interest in discussing further, in any case the sentiment within the 3d modeling team and concept art team towards Hrothgar either remains low, or they were so swamped with *unknown* work that Hrothgar were reduced to an afterthought. The decision to force the team to go ahead with something that it was clear they did not know how to handle, or didn't want to, is an unusual one.

Then again, it's not very passionate work that is being asked for. Players are asking for what is assumed to be the bare minimum. For a cat race to retain its ears. Just because I have little interest in say, making a sandwich when I would much rather make noodles, I would at least take the care to ensure that the sandwich has 2 slices of bread. You know, the basics. A similar concept applies here.

The excuses also cycle back to "but they are built different" - ok, so why were they built so different? Why not create a bestial looking viscerocranium/face and leave the rest of the skull normal shaped in order to accommodate hats and hairs? This would have been the most logical decision. Why was the 3d modelling team pushed towards making a model that they themselves find difficult to work with to the point where they put it off for nearly 3 years?

It's as if everything was stacked against them from the start, from the head model to choosing Roegadyn as a base-had they chosen the middle ground of the highlander build and not given them hunched backs, the aesthetic result would be pleasing to players and the technical specifications would have been less of hassle to work around.

[Midareyukki]

Believe what you want, I do not have the time to skim through each comment that proceeded to argue about what I specifically said I had no interest in discussing further, in any case the sentiment within the 3d modeling team and concept art team towards Hrothgar either remains low, or they were so swamped with *unknown* work that Hrothgar were reduced to an afterthought. The decision to force the team to go ahead with something that it was clear they did not know how to handle, or didn't want to, is an unusual one.

"Belief". Sis, if I have proof, it's not a belief like religion, it's fact. I'm not working off of second-hand sources or stupid beliefs.

Still. Thank you for proving my point. If you don't have time to read and learn, then I absolutely do not have the time to deal with your deranged bias. Good day.

I just want Viera players to know though that in the end it truly doesn't matter who came first. Chicken, egg, lion, rabbit. At the end of the day this is what we have now. And it really is on the now that we should focus on. But just... don't start spouting nonsense. And don't bring in bullshit arguments and act cocky about them. It only hurts you and your race more.

Daaaaaaaang

Anyway: Enough of this "They wanted viera first". Despite there being proof to suggest against that, the thread is about the god awful hairstyles and the seemingly lack of transparency

I know Im not hallucinating when during the LL in 2019, that yoshi said that there was going to be more racial hairs added down the line. Instead of letting the community speculate, they need to have their translators there with them translating this stuff. A mistranslation has caused them a 3 year headache. If you dont wanna have the translators there during the LL? Have an official blog and/or forum post of your translators doing what they do best: Translate. Also, wasn't there a Japanese player that came in and passively confirmed that what he said during the 2019 LL was what he said and not some kind of mistranslation?

Speaking as a translator here, but either they'd need to go through what was said after the fact, or they need an interpreter who could convey information without it being vague or roundabout way as it's being relayed. It's not like it hurts them to actually do it anyway, their translators are more than capable.

They need to stop being so vague and be clearer and more open with information. I'd much rather them being honest than going in circles with information their own clients have disproven. And whatever the issue is, their design, philosophy, quality, whichever, should at least be stated as such. Otherwise they're feeding false hope, and then no wonder fans will be upset and demand for more all the time. If they don't want to work, then just say "We don't want to work". It's blatantly clear that fans finish it for them anyway, so might as well just embrace that.

[Denji]

Speaking as a translator here, but either they'd need to go through what was said after the fact, or they need an interpreter who could convey information without it being vague or roundabout way as it's being relayed. It's not like it hurts them to actually do it anyway, their translators are more than capable.

They need to stop being so vague and be clearer and more open with information. I'd much rather them being honest than going in circles with information their own clients have disproven. And whatever the issue is, their design, philosophy, quality, whichever, should at least be stated as such. Otherwise they're feeding false hope, and then no wonder fans will be upset and demand for more all the time. If they don't want to work, then just say "We don't want to work". It's blatantly clear that fans finish it for them anyway, so might as well just embrace that.

being vague allows for more wiggle room with smaller issues which is one of the things i have just learned to expect.

however for larger issues it can blow up in your face, which is what happened hear but also compounded by the fact that they clearly didn't expect as many people to be as mad about it as they are.

still doesn't make what they've done ok, it's been multiple years of false hope now. really just slapped the community in the face since a lot of people despite not playing a hroth do NOT want to see peeled hroths with jellybeans for skulls.

[CidHeiral]

Man I love my thighlander but if female Au Ra looked like the top left I would fanta immediately and never look back.

[Varkyn]

Hi! As the devs asked us our feedback, here I'll just give mine.

My Background

First and foremost, I must say, I am a professional 3D Artist working in the game industry for more than 10 years now. I have a deep love for the Hrothgar as they are the only race that appeal to me in the game. Although I do not have the most extensive knowledge about FFXIV engine, I do feel like I understand a lot about the difficulties the devs see in making more Hrothgar Hairstyles.

The Main Problem

As I understand it, the 4 Hrothgar heads are all somewhat different and all of their ears are shaped and placed a little different on each head, this in itself is the biggest problem regarding the addition of new hairstyle. This makes it so if you want to add 1 hairstyle available to all the 4 heads, you need 4 different version of that hairstyle, this will for sure take a lot more time to develop per hairstyle. Knowing this here's my plan to turnaround this situation and "save the Hrothgar"

The proposed solutions

I'll try to make it in how I would tackle this chronologically, maybe over the course of multiple patch releases.

1. Make the original Hrothgar-only Hairstyles available to all the faces. This will require adjustments per head, but that is already a huge "quick-win" and I really don't see this as an impossibility. Time consuming, certainly more than a hyur yes, but never impossible + you save time in designing new hairstyles from scratch. This would already be a LOT more choices to all your Hrothgar players without requiring a Fantasia to choose between more than two hairstyles per head.

2. Toggle the ears back on the newly added hairstyles, the clipping issues are way less important than the actual ears. IF you have time, try to adjust them to make clipping less apparent, but this is optional, it would be another "Quick-win".

3. Once all this is done, I would try to design 1 new hairstyle specifically for Hrothgar that would be compatible with the 4 heads. The Copy paste of the other race's Hairstyle is a poor choice in my opinion as they will most likely feel off on a non-human race.

4. Moving forward, I would try to add at least 2-3 new hairstyle for Hrothgar before 7.0 that would already be a big win

Think of it
-16 Hairstyles available regardless of your head
-6 Hairstlyes (With Ears) added in 6.1
-3 new fully designed for Hrothgar before 7.0

That would take us to 25 Hairstyles to choose from regardless of your Head choice. It would be a HUGE leap in customization options compared to where we sit now.

Again, I do not know all the exact specifics of the FFXIV engine, but my professional opinion is that with only one artist dedicated to this ordeal it is totally within the realm of possibility even more so if you're lucky enough to have an artist motivated by this project.

Thank you for your time, and I pray for a quick turnaround of this sad situation for all my fellow Hrothgar <3.

[Varkyn]

P.S. : My Portrait is a Viera male because I was so disheartened yesterday that I thought about changing race, but it just didn't sit right by me, so I'm already back to Hrothgar, just my lodestone has not updated yet :P.

[Vahlnir]

To add to my edit. Here's what people are misremembering, HARD.

It was stuff like this that Yoshida asked to include in the game.





He wanted a bestial race. Because he felt the game had a lot of human-like races. The major variance was just "human with cat ears".

And he wanted to deviate from it.

This is what you're clinging onto.



They had considered options such as Viera but discarded it due to it being too similar to Miqo'te. He wanted a bestial race, not this. And even Au Ra weren't ultimately too bestial, because the dev team thought it was too hard and too rigid.

Viera weren't even the only ones considered.

And we have Yoshida's own statements saying that he experimented with the Lupines specifically to bring his vision of a more bestial-looking race to fruition. But that the limitations were still there. Hrothgar is the best solution he's gotten.

So if you're going to claim anything, please understand the context beforehand.

Forever salty over what they did to female Au Ra. That very first concept in the top left was amazing.

[Retrisar]

For them to do a proper looking Beastial race they'll have to hire some people from South Korea.
All SE race designs are just showing lack of imagination.

But at least i know where their team spent all that time instead working on new haircuts :

[Arkfrost]

Because unless it generates bad press (see: not being able to marry the same gender) the non-JP forums are largely ignored.

There are several examples in this thread of mods and such saying they'll "pass it along" and we never hear of it again, including stuff from 7-8 years ago.

The sad truth is that this is a Japanese game and outside of trying to nickle and dime you with the cash shop, they generally don't care.

Reminder that NA/EU/Non-JP players are second class citizens.

That's a common misconception. While people here in the west always claim the devs only really listen to the JP community, the JP community says exactly the same about us. It's a common meme in the JP official forums here, that "Yoshida never listen to the demands of JP and only do what the western audience wants".

また仮にJPプレイヤーが満足していたとしても、EU等の他フォーラムのフィードバックを無視するなどということはあり得ないので、その点はご安心ください。

むしろJPプレイヤーの中からは、吉田Pは海外の声ばかり聞いていると言う声も聞かれます。

"And even if JP players are satisfied, there is no way they would ignore feedback from other forums such as EU.
In fact, some JP players say that YoshidaP only listens to overseas feedback."

___________

Yep, this quote is the elephant in the room. It seems a bit specific to be a horribly mistranslated? How could they have told us that we weren't originally going to get any hairs, when there is that literal quote right there.

No, it is not mistranslated. As you can see, that quote was from the Liveletter LIII. You can go on the forums, right here, and look up the official translation:

(01:51:49)
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.

Meanwhile, little fun fact, I just noticed yet another lie from Yoshida:

(02:10:17)
Q: Are there plans to make it easier to tell if an attack is physical or magical?
A: I believe we answered this before, but we haven’t implemented this yet as it would delay the patches. We often make last minute balance changes, and we might have to change a physical/magical attack right before release. If we were to display this information, we’d have to change the UI whenever we make such an adjustment, which would delay the patch release. Please understand that we are not intentionally trying to hide information.

Well that is a fkn lie. There's a Dalamud plugin called "DamageInfo" that literally lets you choose which color magical damage has, which color physical damage has, which color unspecified damage has, and none of that has to changed on a per-attack basis on the UI. You can simply set it so ALL magical damage has a specific colour, just based on the fact that it's magic damage. So "we'd have to change the UI whenever we make such an adjustment" ist just pure bullshit.

[Yencat]

Daaaaaaaang

Anyway: Enough of this "They wanted viera first". Despite there being proof to suggest against that, the thread is about the god awful hairstyles and the seemingly lack of transparency

I know Im not hallucinating when during the LL in 2019, that yoshi said that there was going to be more racial hairs added down the line. Instead of letting the community speculate, they need to have their translators there with them translating this stuff. A mistranslation has caused them a 3 year headache. If you dont wanna have the translators there during the LL? Have an official blog and/or forum post of your translators doing what they do best: Translate. Also, wasn't there a Japanese player that came in and passively confirmed that what he said during the 2019 LL was what he said and not some kind of mistranslation?

It's literally what was posted on these forums, people weren't going off some vague third party translated source no one is able to find anymore.

Now this was of course after the expansion had released so while the original intent may have been to never add more hairstyles to them, I personally don't remember ever reading anything like that from an officially translated source and the LL a month or so later immediately contradicts that as well.

Over time there's also been a lot of talk about how the questions would often lump Viera and Hrothgar together even though they had very different problems that needed different solutions, and we'd get one non-specific answer so it was never really clear if it was meant for Viera, Hrothgar or both.

Your point still stands though, if they had been clear before Hrothgar came out that they had no intent or they'd be unable to add more hairstyles to them then people could have made an informed decision on playing the race or not. It would still be a strange decision to release a race with effectively 2 hairstyles per head you can't even change between without a Fantasia and then not add anything to them, but if they go back on their alleged original intent for the race a month or so later they can't act surprised people want more hair.

It seems the options now are;

A) Faster shared hairstyles with no ears.
B) Slower shared hairstyles with ears.
C) Unique racial hairstyles but fewer in number.

I don't envy them having to sift through all the feedback and having to try and make a decision that will make the most people happy, but they really kind of did it to themselves being so unclear from the start. I feel worse for Hrothgar players who for the most part waited patiently and now have to wait even longer for a solution.

I wonder if all this was communicated to the JP playerbase more clearly before release?