New hrothgar hairstyles are really bad.

[Midareyukki]

half the facial features are locked behind other faces for no reason. like... eyebrows for some reason.

((everything about that ridiculous horn clip...))

It just feels like we find more and more stuff that's just left unfinished and shoddily done. As well as more and more cases that prove that they could have done this. They just didn't care. And that what we've heard from them has been nothing but dismissive lies. Work that amateurs have done for free, faster and with very minimal issue. And I mean it, amateurs. Karowolus is right when he says some people don't even have any degree in 3D Modelling, yet have managed to come up with fixes.

It's worse because at the moment, those chuckles were the "obvious cue" it was an april fools joke. At most, some people may have taken it as some self awareness joke - "ha ha, yeh, its funny cuz we've been waiting years for this, good one guys..." - but then the LL ended and we were left with the realization that it wasn't an april fools joke and that they were trying not to laugh at pictures that we were supposed to be taking seriously, or even cheering.

It may not have been intentional, let alone malicious, but in recontextualization, those chuckles did leave a bad taste.

Yeah. At the beginning I too thought "Ok no, come on, it has to be an April Fool's joke". But even then, I felt "this is what they're going to joke about? It's in such poor taste". I both wished and didn't wish they had come out and said it was an April Fool's joke.

It looked god-awful and they were laughing and dismissing, the 2B hair looked like a meme. Remember their "Viangaa" troll post? It looked like that!
And at the same time, I felt like I was being made fun of. Hrothgars have until now felt like a noble race. Yet this happens. It just feels like we were being turned into a meme race. That 2B image is disgusting to look at. It didn't seem like a laughing matter given how they've dealt with the topic for 3 years.

I can get behind the idea that it wasn't malicious, if anything for the benefit of the doubt. But if it was meant to be anything positive, it sure as hell backfired. It felt disgusting, and it was outrageous to watch.

No one in their right mind would look at 2Hroth and think "mhmm, that's totally a serious and natural-looking thing". I've seen shitposting in 4chan with about as much quality. If there's anything I can accuse them of, it's lack of awareness and tact. It had about as much common sense as the 6.1 scene where we rat out Y'shtola to Varshahn. And with 200% less humour.

[Velnora]

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

I don't play them. It's just another thing to add to the list of "we could do this, but we can't cause".

For being a AAA gaming studio, it seems all they do is make excuses. Either they don't want to spend the money, or they are incompetent (see modders)

[Denji]

I don't play them. It's just another thing to add to the list of "we could do this, but we can't cause".

For being a AAA gaming studio, it seems all they do is make excuses. Either they don't want to spend the money, or they are incompetent (see modders)

def a time/money thing

square is very much stuck in a very old mindset when it comes to gamedev and the higher ups have no actual interest in games it seems as the president is very overt in only really caring about money given the PR, letters and speeches he's given in the past. i know you can say that about any company but when it comes to game studios it always feels a little gross.

i suspect square was just "well the game's done so we're cutting 2/3rds of your staff" and the ones that remain are getting burnt out. doesn't make up for the lies or misinformation but i also suspect if they are running ragged then it might be them desperately trying to give some sort of excuse besides "well daddy square enix pockets all our cash and doesn't give any back" which would just get them fired.

[Velnora]

def a time/money thing

square is very much stuck in a very old mindset when it comes to gamedev and the higher ups have no actual interest in games it seems as the president is very overt in only really caring about money given the PR, letters and speeches he's given in the past. i know you can say that about any company but when it comes to game studios it always feels a little gross.

i suspect square was just "well the game's done so we're cutting 2/3rds of your staff" and the ones that remain are getting burnt out. doesn't make up for the lies or misinformation but i also suspect if they are running ragged then it might be them desperately trying to give some sort of excuse besides "well daddy square enix pockets all our cash and doesn't give any back" which would just get them fired.

Higher ups are all about NFT's. If that says enough.

[Berret_Snow]

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.

In all my years of playing MMOs I have never seen such a Parasocial relationship than what some FFXIV players have with the devs, especially with Yoshi, you would think that they were bonded and have known each other as closr family friends by the way they bend over backwards to defend every little thing the team does. There are STILL some people defending these hairstyles. But I guess the blowback was not something the team thought would ever happen, especially from such a small population.

The Parasocial stuff is just super creepy at this point.

[Midareyukki]

In all my years of playing MMOs I have never seen such a Parasocial relationship than what some FFXIV players have with the devs, especially with Yoshi, you would think that they were bonded and have known each other as closr family friends by the way they bend over backwards to defend every little thing the team does. There are STILL some people defending these hairstyles. But I guess the blowback was not something the team thought would ever happen, especially from such a small population.

The Parasocial stuff is just super creepy at this point.

I just mention Yoshida since he's the guy who runs the project and manages the team. Can't really tell Soken to play a Viera, don't even think he plays Bard xD

But the only other online game I know of with such a well-liked and respected dev team is Warframe. And yeah, even with the bloody actress who plays Lotus playing the game, the community doesn't switch to a die-hard Paladin defending the game and singing its every praise every day.

People see ARR's history and think Yoshida's some national hero. But he's really just one guy who had foresight and enough balls to go to his higher-ups and tell them "Yo, either wake up or let the fire spread". That's really just it.

Higher ups are all about NFT's. If that says enough.

Wait, so we're not playing Limited Races, we're playing NFT Races? I mean, it makes sense, since NFTs really only have value in virtual currency for an inferior product, and we had to buy Fantasias to change hairstyle on a race that's still missing features.

/s

[Kelev]

def a time/money thing

It's a time/money thing, but then again, you can say any change in the game is a time/money thing.

I do not presume there to be anything "evil" going on here, nor especially greedy. It would be nice to have there be an explanation that people are getting stupid rich off of subscriber money, but that's probably just not what's happening. There's work that needs to be done, and they don't want to do it. It's not greedy, it's just unwilling, because undoing things is awful work.

The problem here, in my opinion is two-fold:

1) When Naoki Yoshida lauds the "unorthodox methods" they had to use to make the Hrothgar happen, what he's doing is lauding the duct tape that was put on the system to make the system work at the time. And that's fine that they had to do that, but there's no reason to hold this up as some sort of technical feat that pushed the boundaries of human computing technology. You used the Roe muscle slider as the tail slider and then figured that was "good enough." Your "unorthodox methods" were bolting the ears to the head like a cheap halloween mask, and then never coming back and standardizing them. That's not "we did some crazy, neat things to make magic happen," that's "we hacked this together and now that we're being called on it we're realizing that using bones/vertices in places they didn't belong is causing problems."

2) This is some of the worst customer service and QA I've seen game wide in a long time. You had not only the Viera hair hyped because they were happy with the work they've done with them, as well they should be, but also because they figured out how to make future work easier like they said they would. Then with the Hrothgar, they went out of their way to do things like hide how things were (see: "Not Showing the Haircuts from the Side") or defending putting out crummy products (see "I'm 'torn' about how to continue.") or just basic documentation failures (see "2P's hair will be available at any point" when a Modern Aesthetics manual is required.")

And it's not just our hair. Square has had really awful QA of late - see all of the horror stories involving the housing lottery which, let's be honest, is a pretty fundamental failure, and frankly a bigger headline than our hair, simply because it makes a better news article.

That said, one excuse that I will not, under any circumstances, accept, is that as a big company Square Enix can do only one thing at a time. And if you want to reduce the flames of everyone's ire, don't use the same "everyone's gonna have to be more patient while we figure stuff out" which seems to be trotted out every time there's an issue. You guys want to convince me that you care about this, here's what you say:

1) Holy sh*t.
2) You're right, we didn't do right by you, and not just because we missed a date.
3) Even if we don't know how to fix it, we're going to get back to you on X schedule.

[Kelev]

Wait, so we're not playing Limited Races, we're playing NFT Races? I mean, it makes sense, since NFTs really only have value in virtual currency for an inferior product, and we had to buy Fantasias to change hairstyle on a race that's still missing features.

I think what Velnora means here is that Yoshi's higher-ups at Square wanted NFTs in the game (There are a bunch of articles about how FFXIV should be augmented reality "year one" and NFT "year one" and Yoshi said "No." which is good on him. I'm not going to defend everything he does, but I'm not going to universally rake him over the coals either for everything he does either.)

You can Google it for now if you like, and Velnora's right, they did consider it, but didn't happen. Or hasn't yet. "No plans for," and "I'd resign if they implemented," are different responses about NFTs.

[Chikatsu]

my money is on Yoshida and a fair bit of CBU3 are all working on XVI as well, so more work is getting delegated and/or lax quality control, and higher ups really don't give a damn. it certainly feels like Yoshida has acted as a sort of wall between his team and corporate management, especially with their failure with at least two Live Service model games.

[Denji]

my money is on Yoshida and a fair bit of CBU3 are all working on XVI as well, so more work is getting delegated and/or lax quality control, and higher ups really don't give a damn. it certainly feels like Yoshida has acted as a sort of wall between his team and corporate management, especially with their failure with at least two Live Service model games.

Sort of what I suspect is happening, too.

Doesn't make anyone's complaints any less legitimate tho'... I say this so people don't think I'm defending the decision.