New hrothgar hairstyles are really bad.

[Kelev]

If they want us to congratulate them for McGyvering their way through this…And it isn't at all the rocket science they make it out to be.

That’s my core issue, Midare. The double-standard.

You see, you can’t have this “kludge” design philosophy - which isn’t just normal for games, it’s normal for maintenance programming in any discipline - and not come back and fix it, or it will bite you on the ass someday.

But when that happens, it’s what you do about it that makes you the company you are.

If you’ve said “when I say I’m going to do something I do it” and “we’re researching Hrothgar and Viera to make hairstyles easier because we promised” unfortunately, you might have to do some one-off design work that you will have to throw away later because you never resolved that kludge.. And if, internally, you’ve said “because of the technical cost of doing race-specific implementation we’re not doing that any more.” (Which is my guess what’s going on) you’ve got some serious problems.

1) Either the Hrothgar are “special” or they aren’t. If they are special then that means that you have special constraints that you haven’t resolved and you’re going to have to do one-off work on them to make things that aren’t nightmare fuel and you’re going to have to throw that work away when you’re done.

2) Either the Hrothgar are worth additional work or they aren’t. That means that you’re going to spend the additional time required to un-kludge them at some point or another. That may not happen now, but if you want the Hrothgar to survive into the next expansion or not depends on this. This future-proofing is a completely different task from hairstyles.

3) Either you’re going to honor your promises or you’re not. The “hairstyles” you selected were by and large inappropriate, implemented poorly, and belied every time you said Hrothgar were supposed to be bestial, or that you cared about clipping, or that you were going to do something about it.

But the reason there is the faint odor of and community reaction to bull crap here is that everything that’s been done here either seems like an attempt to not do work, a hope we’ve forgotten what you promised, a desperate attempt to buy time, or a contradiction in terms.

And it doesn’t have to be. Just say you knew what you did sucked and you need more time to put out a quality product AND MOST IMPORTANTLY HERE’S WHO IS WORKING ON IT AND HOW LONG THEY’RE GOING TO TAKE.

As a developer, you have, before touted and backed up your reputation of listening to your fans. As fans we have been patient with you before and will be again. No harm done.

But tell us you understand you screwed up. Not that you’re “torn,” not that you “need feedback.” This was bad. And you knew it. But you intend to make it right.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I think that’s what would help me the most.

[Pip_Chick]

I can’t speak for everyone, but I think that’s what would help me the most.

This. What I want from them is plain and simple transparency. I think there are more than enough resources out there to find out about 3D models, rigs and coding, for people to know and understand what goes into it. Just come out and talk to your players like they are adults, cause let's be honest, the people that follow the LL are in majority adults. Tell us the truth, apologise for the insult done (cause that laugh that accompanied the wigs was taken as an insult by a lot of people). And tell us exactly what you will do to fix the problem and give us a date. If a gaming company can put a hard date on a AAA, hyper-realistic game, then you can put one too on the changes that will be made for the Hrothgar heads.

[Denji]

This. What I want from them is plain and simple transparency. I think there are more than enough resources out there to find out about 3D models, rigs and coding, for people to know and understand what goes into it. Just come out and talk to your players like they are adults, cause let's be honest, the people that follow the LL are in majority adults. Tell us the truth, apologise for the insult done (cause that laugh that accompanied the wigs was taken as an insult by a lot of people). And tell us exactly what you will do to fix the problem and give us a date. If a gaming company can put a hard date on a AAA, hyper-realistic game, then you can put one too on the changes that will be made for the Hrothgar heads.

It would really be nice if we could be spoken to instead of just the rambles of some lalafell DPS giving us conflicting information.

[Velnora]

This. What I want from them is plain and simple transparency. I think there are more than enough resources out there to find out about 3D models, rigs and coding, for people to know and understand what goes into it. Just come out and talk to your players like they are adults, cause let's be honest, the people that follow the LL are in majority adults. Tell us the truth, apologise for the insult done (cause that laugh that accompanied the wigs was taken as an insult by a lot of people). And tell us exactly what you will do to fix the problem and give us a date. If a gaming company can put a hard date on a AAA, hyper-realistic game, then you can put one too on the changes that will be made for the Hrothgar heads.

This isn't exclusively an issue with the Hrothgar hair. It's a result of years of people defending every single thing SE does, good or bad, and trying to silence any criticism of the game. We have reached the point of mundane patch cycles, with excuses for "why" they can't do something. But, when you have an army of people that fervently defend you, it must not come as a surprise when they think everyone must be ok with how things are going.

[Allegor]

This isn't exclusively an issue with the Hrothgar hair. It's a result of years of people defending every single thing SE does, good or bad, and trying to silence any criticism of the game. We have reached the point of mundane patch cycles, with excuses for "why" they can't do something. But, when you have an army of people that fervently defend you, it must not come as a surprise when they think everyone must be ok with how things are going.

Most people "complaining" are Hrothgar players or Hrothgar supporters, most people saying "it's fine" are potatoes or catgirls, with the occasional bunny boy ...I wonder who they'd listen to

[Midareyukki]

It would really be nice if we could be spoken to instead of just the rambles of some lalafell DPS giving us conflicting information.

Oof. Careful, you'll upset some people xD Then again, it wouldn't be the OF's if people didn't freak out because we weren't nice to the devs.

The threads going around asking him to change to X race and Y class just shows how much people want the devs to really put some weight into the whole "we play the game too" quip. Because he sure as hell was quick to say that about World of Warcraft, but all I've seen him do was use his Lalafell. And the other races have a lot more issues to them that haven't been addressed. Less talk and more effort, please. Words alone have carried you thus far, but now it's actions that need to be taken. This isn't us being mean. This is us changing what we want to see from the dev team. We've congratulated the dev team thus far, but now we have reasons to criticise and not do that anymore. And we do like the dev team and support them in their future endeavours. But being supportive doesn't excuse them from hearing it when they need to.

snippy

Everything about this. In general, their attitude toward the playerbase needs to be clearer. Those half-answers only work for one audience. They don't work for other cultures, and if you're serious about having those interpreters there, then speak globally, not locally.

Because the poor treatment for 3 years, the lack of content, the conscientious decision of not giving us stuff even from events, the feigned ignorance when they explained why they couldn't do stuff for us and Viera and have damaged the races. The reason for them being unpopular is in part their fault too. We don't want more of the same "we know, we just don't care". Because if that's the case, they're no different than the guys who made 1.0. And if that's the case, why should we care either?

We've shown that we could be patient.
We've shown that we know what's going on and what can be done. We know what you have done. We even gave you guys explanations of how to do it. This information is more and more widespread now thanks to datamining and modding. As much as you hate it, this is your reality now. We know.

We've been patient and quiet. So if you kick us at our best behaviour, don't expect us to not be angry, after demanding proper justice and attention for so long. We know enough now. And that's why we don't accept this ridiculous notion that "it's too hard", not just because at its worst it isn't, but also because you're Square bloody Enix. What, we're hard to make but Red XIII wasn't? People are paid for this, and this should have been decided and organized years ago.

So I agree with Kelev's feedback. The whole thing.

Most people "complaining" are Hrothgar players or Hrothgar supporters, most people saying "it's fine" are potatoes or catgirls, with the occasional bunny boy ...I wonder who they'd listen to

Those bunny boys really need to look into a mirror. Whatever happened to "we're all on the same boat"?

[Raskbuck]

apologise for the insult done (cause that laugh that accompanied the wigs was taken as an insult by a lot of people).

I'd like to see this.

I've seen people on a different thread say that they didn't laugh when presenting those hairstyles, and that it was just a misunderstanding. I personally find concerning the length some people will go in order to protect and defend the game, to the point of invalidating other people's feelings and downplaying them.