VIERA AND HROTHGAR COMPLAINT MEGATHREAD

[Caro178]

In spite of my meteion levels of negativity Hrothgar (unless the devs royally screw over hrothgar AGAIN between now and 7.0) have gotten/will get 2/3 of my top wanted hair options in Endwalker.
We got Rainmaker this patch and SHOULD get Styled in 6.5 since viera got it this patch.
All I want is Windcaller left. Id love to get it same time viera do. They HAVE to know hrothgar want windcaller most of all, put hrothgar windcaller into google and theres like a dozen modded screens of hrothgar wearing it first thing.
Do any viera hair trackers have ideas what they'll slap on your heads in 6.4? If no windcaller I would like Gyr Abania.
(There really arent many good MA options left at this point. The discount Hien men can use in character creation is one of few "generic" hairs I like but the Character Creation hair options seem really random to me).

We've had a good idea with base game hairstyles because they're organized in an established list from oldest to newest on every other race. This lets us make a pretty educated guesstimate every patch cycle which hairstyles will be added next for Viera because they need to match all the other lists. Modern Aesthetics styles have seemingly been chosen at random without any rhyme or reason. The only maybe-pattern I've noticed is they have consistently added a hairstyle from the Gold Saucer every single patch, and that could just be a coincidence because a number of styles are exclusive to the Saucer.

[Duskane]

honestly just waiting on all the characte hair styles
Yshtola,Thancred,Noctis,cloud etc etc not sure why these are not priority.

[Kazhar]

honestly just waiting on all the characte hair styles
Yshtola,Thancred,Noctis,cloud etc etc not sure why these are not priority.

Most players don't own them. Especially Viera and Hrothgar players, who probably didn't get out of their way to acquire hairstyles they couldn't use. If their pipeline only allows them a few hairstyles per patch, it makes sense not to focus on those that can't be acquired anymore (Noctis), those that very few people ever got (Cloud), or those that require you to pay IRL money.
I think their current implementation (having one or two character hairstyle each patch) is a good compromise.

[Caro178]

honestly just waiting on all the characte hair styles
Yshtola,Thancred,Noctis,cloud etc etc not sure why these are not priority.

My best guess is they haven't been the top priority because they're the least owned hairstyles in the game. They had a few potential methods of prioritizing which hairstyles became available first, and they clearly close to focus on styles that were a) owned by a large % of players, b) popular.



We've discussed this and we tend to have differing opinions all around. Some would have preferred that they focus Mogstation purchases first so people who have already purchased them would get their money's worth sooner, others feel it would have come across as predatory to relegate most of the new Viera hairstyles to the real money shop.

[VerdeLuck]

honestly just waiting on all the characte hair styles
Yshtola,Thancred,Noctis,cloud etc etc not sure why these are not priority.

I'd want the cloud one to be near the end since I can't use it regardless. It's locked to contest winners only, so the number of contest winners who pick the cloud hair style and also play viera seems like it'd be super small.

[Midareyukki]

Thank you, it's not talked about as often (though with how many other problems Hrothgar has had I guess it's not surprising) so I did wonder, it would be a bigger change than the potbelly/slouch fix but hopefully if there's enough noise about it they'll be open to changing it. Ideally it'd be optional because I'm sure like how it is whenever Elezen animations/proportions are brought up there's people who like how they are now, though I don't know how likely that is.

Sorry to dig this back up, but it's actually worse than Pip mentioned.

Because one thing is tearing and having weird texture warping. Which it can do, because Roegadyn gear is already stretched out and warped, so add in awkard poses and you get yourself a recipe for weirdness.

Another thing is weird animations having to adjust themselves for this. I know there's other such examples people have pointed out before. But the worst one is definitely in MCH. Their autoattacks are very clearly using a Roegadyn model, but then they have to go back to being hunched over. And unfortunately, this isn't done right. It's not seamless. You just akwardly snap your spine! Like you go from being totally "fine" to jolting your spine to match the hunchback.

If they do get rid of the hunch I hope they make it an option you can toggle on and off. The main tank in my endgame static is a Hrothgar main, and he loves the slouch. He even tried downloading the *cough* thing that changes the posture, and he hated it so much he was complaining for an hour and left just to change it mid raid. There are Hrothgar players who like the posture and would rather not have the same humanoid posture as all the other races. Knowing how much he disliked it I would really hope for a solution that keeps both parties happy rather than swapping from one thing some people don't like to another thing other people won't like.

imo this is perfectly doable. Charr, for example, have a hunchback. Except... it works better on Charrs because they're specifically done to be animalistic. The way Hrothgar hunchback is designed is quite jarring, not because it in itself is bad, but because it leads to really awkward poses without proper justification (the remainder of their design isn't done to justify the hunchback, and it's even worse when the rest of the game doesn't acknowledge it).

Which is why I even said "with very niche support for it; most people would rather it went away". Because there ARE people, in these very forums too, who have voiced their appreciation for the hunchback. The middle term for it, imo, is giving it "more" of a justification. That way it won't look jarring for people who don't want it. And that way it also will allow people who do like it to have an even better experience and do better work for it.

Because, and this is not a diss to people who want the hunchback: a hunched over Hrothgar should remain consistent. As it stands, Hrothgars just look like they want to take a dump right there and then. Were this design better laid out and experimented with and the design stood a bit better, it likely wouldn't be this much of a hot topic. You'd still have people against it, sure, but in lesser numbers because the animalistic traits of Hrothgar would blend better with it.

So... yeah. Imo? It's a matter of executing the concept than the concept itself. I think your Tank is right in liking it, and it's fine if they don't feel comfortable with *the thing* that changes their posture. But given what I've seen from people who use it, I personally do prefer it because I see Hrothgar being a good concept with a Roegadyn execution, which leads to jarring moments. Like the aforementioned MCH spine snap. Were it better executed, I'd have a much better time welcoming it. And I'm sure many other people would as well.

[Midareyukki]

To illustrate what I mean...



I tested it on other races. No race snaps like Hrothgars do. Some do have a bit of clipping (specifically Roegadyn where I noticed their shoulders liiiiiiiiiiiiightly went back in place), but nothing as egregious as this.

We shoot, our spine snaps so hard it makes an orthopedic surgeon cringe, then the gif loops.

You can clearly tell that I'm not editing this either: the gif loops when I'm back at the default idle pose with the weapon drawn, hence why there's such a long lag between shots You can tell from the glow on the plants. The cut isn't done on the shot, it's done when everything's at idle.

Our backs are just messed up. And while, again, I personally believe this concept could work with a bit more improvement, it's stuff like this that makes me say it's not a good addition in the way Hrothgars are currently designed. Let's be honest: from the neck down, they're just humans with severe back problems. There are ways to do this. This way isn't one of them.

[SturmChurro]

...

You know, I had never really noticed warping until relatively recently when roe or hrothgar players pointed it out, and I think maybe in the EW benchmark when I was looking at male viera. You don't really notice it as much - or at all - on the races I will play (au ra, miqo'te, viera). It does look pretty awful.

Charr are pretty well made, as are a lot of the GW2 races really. I really like the animations and everything else, when you play the two you can kind of see how sort of stiff some of the things in this game look. Charr works pretty nice with hunch, since they actually run around on all fours. Hrothgar, are just catfaced roe with a tail, and the hrothgar NPCs didn't really come off as super animalistic either. Heck, they don't even have claws.

[Midareyukki]

Heck, they don't even have claws.

We only have it in our starter gear xD Which is so jarring and LAZY! "Here guys, have some wrist cuffs. By the way, your claws are just press-on nails tied to a piece of fabric."

[Pip_Chick]

We only have it in our starter gear xD Which is so jarring and LAZY! "Here guys, have some wrist cuffs. By the way, your claws are just press-on nails tied to a piece of fabric."

Still mad on that one! Why can't I just have kitty claws?
Besides I haven't noticed the Machinist spine break, I don't usually play as Macinist so maybe that's why. But damn...
I really hope with the visual update they will take another look at Hrothgar and fix this, cause that is very jarring.