6.2 Hrothgar Update

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

There are also people saying probly not many people will play as a Female Hrothgar but I think we've come this far, and it's not really the matter of will they be super popular and its not like everyone needs to use all races equally

That is a line I like reading <3
A small playerbase/fanbase, is still a base worth listening to.
The Hrothgar players deserve love to, their popularity shouldn't be an excuse or obstacle.

[Midareyukki]

Seriously? I don't think people are understanding my intent right now - other than Vahlnir. I was being sarcastic and joking around. It's why I used emojis. I fully acknowledge that past quote, but what I am saying is Yoshida has seemingly forgotten or outright said the complete opposite this year. If you really want me to search through the big hrothgar thread to pull up newer quotes of him where he said he said they weren't going to receive any hair previously, or the discussions around that original quote being a supposed "mistranslation" I will.

I THINK I remember you posting that somewhere in the 80+ page thread, but I'm not gonna go through it a second time to find stuff to add to a thread xD
I did that on the Feedback one, I'm not doing it again. I had to go through every page, and reading it all again just made me angrier and angrier at the situation when my intent was to be courteous. /playdead

Also, Churro, even when people write /s in the threads, it's hard to really gauge it's sarcasm. Speaking from second-hand experience. I know it's dumb, but it's best to state it's sarcasm, just to be safe.

On that note~

The problem with that line of thinking is they clearly didn't. (...)
It also makes no sense. How could any developer just sit there and be like "Oh hey fans, we made a new race for our game! Also the new race can never do anything besides what you do at Character Creation, isn't that neat!" and expect fans to just be fine with that?

He's right. I think I told you this before, Churro, but even if Yoshida did say that, fan outcry has changed so much in the game. We did ask for some features and they've since acquiesced. We were led to believe that the races would be updated eventually if they had support. Which they have. A lot.

And even if they did. Past tense. They've since turned their back on that stance. But just because they did, it doesn't mean it's okay to drop low-effort and poor-quality content. As in, "okay sure, we know you didn't want to do this... but you CHOSE to do it now. So why are WE being punished? Why is this poorly done? If you decided to do this, then do it to the end, don't half-ass it."

TBH I think Churro knows this. Nor am I questioning the validity of their claim; it is still an interesting thing to wonder "what if SE really did say, in the past, that they wouldn't?". It's just that I also see a lot of people claim "You knew what you were getting into" without taking into account how the game has progressed thus far. It's easy to say "Oh they said X in a vaccum", but we don't play nor live in a vaccum.

EDIT: Oh .__. this has evolved while I was writing. MAN I'm slow

[Midareyukki]

That is a line I like reading <3
A small playerbase/fanbase, is still a base worth listening to.
The Hrothgar players deserve love to, their popularity shouldn't be an excuse or obstacle.

Oh I have just the images for you, Ronso.




"We spared no expense."

...yeah, they need to respect their own words. Especially when it comes to Hrothgar.

[Vahlnir]

Oh I have just the images for you, Ronso.

Well, they definitely continue to nail #3, just not in a good way.

[Kelev]

Well, they definitely continue to nail #3, just not in a good way.

I was amazed all right.

I expected nothing, and was still, somehow, disappointed.

-Kelly

[SturmChurro]

..

A lot of my posts are literally just hyperbole or sarcasm. Maybe I just assume that people can pick it out easier. Especially when I have been an ardent complainer of hrothgar/viera since their launch.. Then again, I have fantasiad so much that my avatar is only recognizable when I am playing my Au Ra. Luckily, I have already gotten past the angry stage. I still hope they fix the races, but I have serious doubts they ever will. I still post in support of them fixing them regardless - Yes, I prefer the word "fix" or "update" in regards to the hrothgar/viera situation, rather than "finish" (explained many times).

The thing is hrothgar didn't really make their voices heard until, briefly, they were noticed during the hairstyle fiasco. Now they are back to seemingly being ignored. Male viera supporters were MUCH more vocal, and relentless, for their inclusion. Now, granted, male viera aren't really niche like hrothgar are. On top of that male viera, I'm pretty sure, are quite popular in Japan. Hrothgar are neither very popular in the west or east, as far as I am aware. Quite a bit less popular in Japan, if I recall. On top of that, while there may be, now, a quite vocal backlash from hrothgar players, obviously not much has come of it. For that matter, a lot of people I remember saying they unsubbed or were unsubbing are still subbed. Thing is though, even if many hrothgar players did unsub, I think Yoshida probably sees it as negligible considering the population and play habits.

I do constantly advocate, on these forums, for quality changes to the game. It's crazy to think that SE saw these hairs, and thought it was alright to just release it like this, but, frankly, quality seems to be going down across the board.

[reivaxe]

The only issue with that is that they had 3 years to realize they needed to do that.

Not really. Every misstake and misstep with Hrothgar was built into the foundation when they were designing them. From YP telling the team to not worry about making hair fit them to the very concept.

What did people cry for other than Viera? Playable Lupin, aka Wolf Headed Highlanders. This is why we got a beast race, people wanted it and YP wanted it.

What did YP do? Look for the WORSE male rig in the game to make a "better" version of that body shape and give it a cat head, even though we "have" a cat race.

WoW devs give Orcs back relief because people hated being hunched, YP runs right into it ... making the texture stretching problems of the Roe-Bro rig very noticeable despite having a smaller frame.

Devote a ton of design budget on the fur and fur pattern memory ish when males normally go full covered, meaning they have to basically be shirtless to show off their patterns.

Were NEVER designed with the thought of changing hair in mind ... in a game where "Head stuff" is a major side of customization, as there's nothing you can do to change your body shape. Result? They made 4 heads that are soo different that it makes it's even harder to go back and make shared hair for them.

EVERY choice was a fumble, everything a misstep. They shoulda designed for the game they had, don't go full beast heads if you can't do it right. Bless Cat Race woulda been the best route head-wise.
It's not lazy, it's being boxed into a corner by your own poorly thought out choices. Nothing the devs do is lazy, they clearly care a lot, even if people aren't happy with everything they do.

we'll see them cut corners on other races or other content.

They've already HAD to cut corners to support Viera and Hrothgar's effery. At this point in the expac, there should be a new in game reward hairstyle for all normal races. What did we get though? Nothing but updates for these 2 races AND LATER a mog female only hair attached to an NPC glam.

Anyone whining about EW not having as many unique gear set designs so far? Remember that they have more character body types to support now, and they're also making a graphics update AND they're making Female Hrothgar. Man power doesn't just come outta no where.

That's the thing, isn't it? :T

I hope they've finally seen what the Hrothgar playerbase and the rest of the community thinks about their methods. Not just for the males, but so that female Hrothgar doesn't get thrown into the drain before release.

But given how Male Viera were released, my hopes are in the pipe with the rest of the race.

A lot of the male's problems just naturally shouldn't be expected on the females. We have 2 full new races to look at, neither Viera nor Au Ra have both genders made from the same base race's body type. So Body wise, I expect them to be a taller version of literally ANY non-Femroe female. Hunch? Design wise that's a non-starter for females seeing as anything with boobs being hunched is a pain in the butt to animate/ design for/ model for and looks unappealing af so that's not happening. Heads? Outside lala, every female in this game has far less face diversity than their male counterparts.

The biggest question would be hair ... seeing as they're NOW giving the males hair, it would stand to reason that they would take sharing hair into consideration for the females so that it doesn't look janked.

The thing is I completely agree that they are in a bad state, and the comment about him saying he said they wouldn't receive any hair, when he clearly said they were during ShB is really.. odd. Especially when there are official quotes all over the place, saying they would get hairs.

I think you all are confusing some basic things.

Hrothgar were never planned to have SHARED hair, hair that other races have. They were also not designed to be able to change their own hair outside of $10 potions. The plan was to add new heads with unique Hrothgar "Manes" and have people pay $10 to potion to them.

They actively had to change the shape of the heads for some of the faces to make this new shared hair system work.

So yeah, they were supposed to get "Hrothgar hair" that you pay $10s for, like the Stubble face for mids. They heard what people wanted and tried to make the shared hair system work instead.

[SturmChurro]

I think you all are confusing some basic things.

Hrothgar were never planned to have SHARED hair, hair that other races have. They were also not designed to be able to change their own hair outside of $10 potions. The plan was to add new heads with unique Hrothgar "Manes" and have people pay $10 to potion to them.

They actively had to change the shape of the heads for some of the faces to make this new shared hair system work.

So yeah, they were supposed to get "Hrothgar hair" that you pay $10s for, like the Stubble face for mids. They heard what people wanted and tried to make the shared hair system work instead.

Yeah, perhaps initially after launch they did think racial specific hairs would work, but, obviously, considering the recent official reply from Yoshida on how these hairs would take significantly longer, I feel like that's the actual reason why: it would be too much work. Shared hairs are easier to implement and they were supposed to appease people wanting them. Why Yoshida was "surprised" there was such backlash over the hrothgar hairs.

[Vahlnir]

Yeah, perhaps initially after launch they did think racial specific hairs would work, but, obviously, considering the recent official reply from Yoshida on how these hairs would take significantly longer, I feel like that's the actual reason why: it would be too much work. Shared hairs are easier to implement and they were supposed to appease people wanting them. Why Yoshida was "surprised" there was such backlash over the hrothgar hairs.

I think he still would have gotten crap for them even if he left the ears on, but I do think that the removal of the ears was unnecessary fuel for the fire. Leaving them intact would have helped the situation, at least a little bit. Like I said before, they made MORE work for themselves by removing the ears for absolutely no reason. Especially since they had to stretch the "karen" hair which made it look like Voldemort was hiding on the other side of a Hrothgar's head. This isn't Harry Potter, dev team.

[DBriggs304]

They need to work on content that is sustainable/replayable first before worrying about ears.