New 7.1 hairstyle looks nothing like the winning hairstyle from the 2023 contest

[phnxrsngs]

I'm coming in to add my own voice in agreement that the hair style is done very poorly. It's such a shame to see the original concept watered down to what looks like someone got water dumped on their head. It's missing volume and life.

[accidias]

The hair previewed in the patch notes looks cheap and gross, like a bad perm... rather than rushing out a bad style, I wish they had taken their time to properly implement the tight curls and texture :\ This was one of the most anticipated hairstyles too, so seeing it completely butchered makes me worry that all of the hairstyle contest winners will look bad.

[Eidenmorn]

I completely agree with the comments above. This is an insult to the original contest entry. The fact that they called it "inspired by" the contest entry shows that they understand they failed to depict it... and yet they chose to keep it anyway.

[Mayamisa]

Very disappointed.

[NonBinaryNyan]

Hello, I’m the original creator and artist and i just wanted to say thank you for fighting to fix the hair or at lest have SE do better for the other hairstyles that won.

I understood that the hair would not be an exact 1 to 1 to my design but , since i saw how to treated previous designs that won including my mch gun, i had assumed that would at lest find a way to make it somewhat recognizable.

The thing that really bothers me is the fact that I made this hair for my friends and for people who needed this representation.
All three of the hairs i submitted were made with them in mind while i specifically also toned it down enough that they could be used with non poc characters. Especially since curly hair is something that anyone of any skin color and ethnicity could have. (Which is why i even added the examples of non dark skinned characters using it)

When the hair won, i had so many heartfelt and emotional thank you messages from so many people around the world because their hair was finally going to be in game.
So many people who were just happy to finally be themselves.
Now i’m just here so angry and disappointed for them because not only does it look nothing like it while being of strange odd quality, it just also feels like they didn't even try and now all those players lost something they needed.

I would love to be wrong. I would love to learn that someone tried really hard, and even fought to have more curly hair in the game.
Cause atlest then it wouldn't be such a letdown or betrayal.


I want to end with, i know the dev team is probably overworked and overwhelmed. And i do not mean them any hate or bad words. I just wish they can take their time and get things right next time.

Sorry for the long post. And thank you.

I'm glad to see you speak up here, and I'm sorry that you need to. <3

[Anarnee]

I doesn't say that it's from a winning entry and they have been known to sometimes use entries that didn't win, so I wonder if it's one of the hairs that didn't win? They didn't do it with hair yet, but they do it with furniture all the time. They usually put "A winning entry from the FFXIV Hairstyle Design Contest is now available." and this it the only time I remember seeing it not say WINNING, it only says entry.

I hope it's not the one it's based on, but also worried that because people are not being particularly constructive about this that they won't try more curly hair in the future now. I personally was really excited to see them actually try to do something not straight, feels like the last time we got a curly hair was the afro and as someone with curly hair, I would really like to see many more curly hairstyles.

[Phyi]

Coming in to say that I also agree with everyone that looks awful and it is disrespectful to the artist of the entry.

[firesreply]

I was really excited when I first saw the art, but the in game result is super disappointing

Very much hoping they will reconsider how this is implemented and make it look more like the art. There is so few options for textured hair in the game as is, it would be a shame to loose out on something that looks like the original art.

[more_donuts]

Also want to support this. We have barely any textured hair options in this game and none that are properly curly. This is not properly curly, when the design very much was. The artist's entry is also just really cute and this... there's an aspect of having had a bucket of water dumped on your head to it.

The graphical update included many great changes to the game's visuals and display capabilities. I would think that would present a good opportunity to implement a style like this, as we can have styles with higher poly counts than we previously could. And if you don't have the perf budget to do it properly, you really should have picked a different entry to implement-- there were plenty of great-looking braided entries with textured hair that would have been possible to implement with less model complexity.

I really think this hairstyle needs a significant rework to bring it in line with the original concept before it can be released.

[turali_mouse]

Posting in the forums for the first time, if that's supposed to be that contest winner it's truly abysmal. I hope, at least, that they take a better shot at it in the future if they can't do anything about it.