6.2 Hrothgar Update

[aveyond-dreams]

Because that team specifically wanted this race to be in the game, and then promptly abandoned it.

If we're attacking anyone, then all they need to do is present it to their superiors so that someone allocates the proper resources for it.

Because that McDonald's analogy is a terrible analogy as it is, but guess what, it also proves one thing. If A VAST MAJORITY of the people asking for a certain type of burger have come out and said "Yo, this burger is awful", and you don't do anything about it, then it's on you.

Because otherwise, we know full well who to go for. It's just that given how the situation has escalated, SOMEONE needs to move their butt.

And it's not by accusing us Hrothgar players that you'll defend the development team any harder. Because you can think all you want about the method, but what Mosha said was nothing but inappropriate.

We agree that something seriously went wrong on the development side and that fixes need to be implemented, the sooner the better. Feeding into people who either are deliberately trying to get a rise out of you or expressing their opinion, regardless of whether you think it's "inappropriate" or not isn't the good look some Hrothgar players think it is. They are not the target to aim for, and the last thing Hrothgar players need to be doing is getting into heated arguments that result in forum bans.

I still maintain that the development team was clearly out of their league when it came to this whole project and that the expectation of making them "as beastly as possible" culminated in the situation we find ourselves in now. Trying to pass off WoW-style allied races as full FFXIV races was not something that was ever going to work out without severe backlash from the FFXIV playerbase.

The logical way in which the Hrothgar race could have been implemented without the chaos that later ensued is the following:

- *1* base round head shape that can accommodate the various in-game hairstyles and 4 unique faces for that head shape
- No hunchback
- The highlander build which generally looks better in armor due to no stretching of textures
- More expressive eyes
- Eyebrows for more than just one face (and from what I understand those eyebrows were only added at some point during Endwalker)
- No genderlocks and releases at the same time as the female variant

The result of this would have been a far less controversial product that strikes a good balance between catering to beast-race enjoyers and the otherwise anime style loving FFXIV crowd. The drama that erupted over gender locks and stereotypical "male" vs "female" races would have also been avoided. However, instead of choosing the logically sound option, a wrong turn was chosen at every other juncture. For what reasons, no one can say, all I know is it resulted in widespread unhappiness, frustration, and anger on all sides.

Continue being vocal about the issue but please do better in your arguments *in support of needed Hrothgar updates* rather than taking aim at people who are not fully aligned with you. Draw up concepts of what hairs/hats can and should look like on Hrothgars. Draw and post the racial hairstyles you want to see added for Hrothgar. The development team literally took the fan art that was on the first page of the male Viera thread and turned that into reality, so the same is still possible for Hrothgar, assuming that cooler and more convincing voices prevail.

[hfang]

posting to voice my support, as always. don't forget to like the OP as that usually increases the chances of them paying any attention to a thread

[Midareyukki]

Continue being vocal about the issue but please do better in your arguments *in support of needed Hrothgar updates* rather than taking aim at people who are not fully aligned with you. Draw up concepts of what hairs/hats can and should look like on Hrothgars. Draw and post the racial hairstyles you want to see added for Hrothgar. The development team literally took the fan art that was on the first page of the male Viera thread and turned that into reality, so the same is still possible for Hrothgar, assuming that cooler and more convincing voices prevail.

So basically do their job for them. Dude, we're not the design team, we're not even aware of what they can or cannot do. Remember: they have rules that we aren't subjected to.
Not to mention, we have, we keep showing them work done by modders and say "this is what we want". As well as the fact that what we want is honestly simple, it's nothing elaborate like new designs, and if you want them, then you'll find them in the thread made during the April 1st announcements. It's all there. Just read.

Worse still, we've disproven their claim that it's too hard and there was nothing to be done. Not to mention, even if they didn't have the money and the resources to do it, we do at least know one thing: Before any Sprint, Yoshida asks people what they can do, what it will take, and a minimum + a maximum time to do it. He himself admitted to this in the documentary about 1.0 into ARR. So if it's so hard, then they should really prepare beforehand. If they don't have money and resources, don't promise anything. But if you do promise things, allocate stuff properly and treat your content with respect. And they clearly did not. So when people criticise the development team, this is what they're referring to. The lack of attention and care that went into 6.1's updates was really poor.

We HAVE had posts and threads in support of Hrothgar updates. But that won't matter for jack all if Hrothgar are constantly curbed to the side, now will it? And who has the power to do that? The dev team. So all our complaints are forwaded to the development team, and if they can't do anything, then they need to forward it to the person who can provide them with the tools to do so.

Just saying cutely "Oh please present your stuff" isn't enough. Because we have, for three years, and this is the best we got.
You do better in being aware of what it is that we're doing and what is possible and what isn't. Rather than coming up with ludicrous analogies. Because that McDonald's comment just shows that you haven't the faintest idea of how this discourse of Hrothgar updates has evolved.

[Euphares]

When are we gonna' stop skirting around the fact that they did, in fact, have resources and time to make Hrothgar stuff and they chose to make what is arguably the worst choices possible for no reason other than "we thought you would like it/it's funny."





What else is there to say lol.

[Vahlnir]

When are we gonna' stop skirting around the fact that they did, in fact, have resources and time to make Hrothgar stuff and they chose to make what is arguably the worst choices possible for no reason other than "we thought you would like it/it's funny."





What else is there to say lol.

It also took them more time and resources to remove the ears and slap these hairstyles on the head since the ears are supposedly attached to the head by default. They could have just...left them there. lol It's truly mind boggling.

[Midareyukki]

When are we gonna' stop skirting around the fact that they did, in fact, have resources and time to make Hrothgar stuff and they chose to make what is arguably the worst choices possible for no reason other than "we thought you would like it/it's funny."





What else is there to say lol.

I'm literally only skirting it because, as seen by aveyond-dreams and Mosha, we have obtuse people who would go absolutely ballistic for saying that they did have it. Because "Oh you don't know how much time they really have, they have to work on XYZ projects, it's not up to the dev team to do what they want with money", blah blah blah, we've heard it all before.

And I'm frankly tired of it.

I'm tired of having to step on eggshells because people get stupidly offended when we imply the fault lies with someone over at Square Enix.

But otherwise? No, you're absolutely right. They plan stuff out for a long time. They have the resources to do this, both money and manpower. They've had three years worth of feedback and people practically begging them to reconsider their dumb stance on these races.

They're the ones who said "Hrothgar updates are coming in 6.1". And for the time where they were working in 6.1 overall, at no point did they bother doing anything with proper quality.

And then they just Pikachu-face us when we say it's not up to par?

Knock yourselves right out with that one.

And if anyone wants evidence, I keep liking to a forum thread for Hrothgar feedback. I linked every single piece of information fans have gathered that have since become known. Don't say that "Oh you don't know how it's like in there" when we have proper information on this. The ball is on the Dev team now, they are the ones who have to adjust their priorities and do a decent job.

Not blame the fanbase for "asking". Because if that's the case, then holy hell, next time anyone asks for anything on these forums I will shut them down as readily as everyone else has been with us.

That, or start demanding for headgear to hide Au Ra horns from now on. What, too radical? Well, imagine how we feel.

[Akimori]

- More expressive eyes

I agree with everything you said except this part. IMO, Hrothgar actually have very expressive eyes. Despite their limited state, thats one thing that I absolutely adore aboutt hrothgar; Their ability to be as expressive as possible. From gentle Kitten to bad ass warrior that wants to rip you to shreads

[Aelsioln]

Man I've wanted female Hrothgar literally from the second I started playing this game. I remember trying to make my first character and being so disappointed that the race that looked coolest to me was male only. Obviously the announcement of female Hrothgar finally being made, and that we'd get them as soon as they're finished, had me ecstatic.

Well, ecstatic until I started looking into info and lore about the race and saw how Hrothgar have been honestly treated like garbage since release. So many broken promises, the absolute disaster of the "new hairstyles", finding out that a key lore figure was race changed to a Roegadyn, etc. I want to keep being excited, I have the character to race change picked out and even a Fantasia in her inventory already, but I'm worried. Seeing how male Hrothgar have been treated why should we expect the females to be any better? Heck, maybe females won't even get ears at all!

It's absolutely ridiculous and if Hrothgar don't get some love in the Letter from the Producer on the 1st I swear I'm going to flip my desk.

[Kelev]

Inb4 "modders don\\'t have restrictions"

What ARE these restrictions

Hello there!

First off, XiRon, thanks for your post. It’s only through people saying “I don’t really it” that things improve. Whatever issues Square has fixing things, there’s an transparency problem, road map’s not clear, haven’t heard anything in months - that’s just poor customer service.

I’m going to attempt to explain things here, but I’m not defending anyone, only saying why something is difficult. In addition, I am in my 40s and I’ve been laid up with heart problems, so if you need more information, I recommend reading the longer explanation I put in the thread “Hrothgar Haircuts are Really Bad.” I’ve been meaning to put up a video on the subject, but I’m bad at videos, and if you or someone you know isn’t and would like to help me out, please contact me at HelloIAmJood#1809 on Discord. Bottom line, it’s good to understand the problem, but please be gentle. I’m still sick and this is hard.

All FFXIV characters are balls of data. We have colors, vertices, inventories, and bones. Even our clothes have bones in them, which is why your legs don’t punch through your pants while running.

Hrothgar are descended from Roes. We re-use a lot of structures from them for different things. For example the muscle slider for them actually controls the length of our tails. We have a bestial jaw and “whisker” bones as well as 5 bones in our tails. All of this stuff’s gotta come from somewhere, and we can’t just “have more” or we’d become difficult for lower-end video cards and PS4s to render. There are some “kludges” that are done here and there to make us possible. One of which is that our ears are part of our ‘masks’ - this is part of why we can’t have hats, and part of why we don’t have ear wiggles like Miqos, and 100% of why ears are not a selectable item on character creation. Viera do not have this problem, you can see that partially because they have have selectable ears.

Adding more bones and details would also make characters more difficult to transport which is already hard. You can see this in that we get chocobo saddlebags rather than additional inventory slots.

So I will go ahead and say it - modders aren’t the answer. They can only do a few things:

1) They can replace a model with something else (and others cannot see it)
2) They can make the model more complex, see problems above.
3) They can take the time to do race-specific work which Square used to do in HW, but I believe will not because it’s in a design document somewhere. This involves a change to how the game makes some decisions, and I’d rather Square fixed it right than have a modder change my client.

I encourage you to take a look at the “Bad Haircut” thread where I go into this in more detail, or contact me at the Discord above or on my Twitter @kelevvidui - happy to discuss more.

[ReynTime]

To be fair I don't put the hat modding in such a high pedestal either. Their solution to most hats is hiding the ears. And I'm sorry but even with a race of anthropomorphic large cats not being real anyone who knows anything about real animals at all would tell wearing accessories muffling or flattening your ears like that would range from awkward to extremely uncomfortable. It's even more so than the ridiculous new hair. Majority of them don't look like a species with ears like Viera, Miqo'te or Hrothgar would want to wear at all unless they were forced and wanted to have trouble hearing while in action.