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

[skelmet]

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.

Don't know what to do beyond echoing the artist's words here and throwing in my +1. I genuinely hope this style gets another look, people were so excited to see hair with this texture make it into the game.

[kilvies]

made a forum acct to voice my support for this complaint as well. At the rate we get new hair and considering how the devs seemed to have focused on accurate portrayal of american cultures, this ramen noodle hair is downright insulting. "inspired by" is a flimsy excuse when the hair doesn't even look good out of this context. Please take it back to the drawing board and give it the respect it deserves

[Roda]

what's is even crazier, the female hairstyle on the bottom right is what the contest hair should look like ig

More ingame images of that bottom right hairstyle for reference:






(bad video quality but better than nothing??)

[Pseudochrome]

The in game model is so bad that I have to wonder what the point of even selecting this as a winner was. I sincerely hope this was just incompetence that somehow slipped under the radar of management because they could have chosen any loose curl hairstyle and not gotten peoples' hopes up to have actual POC-coded curls that aren't the afro...

[BipedalAnimeSkull]

holy hell i didn't even notice that's supposed to be the winning hairstyle if true. I just thought "haha Muzan from Kimetsu no Yaiba looking ahh hairstyle" and moved on. This is unreal. When they picked it to be a winner, I thought "finally, SE cares about representation and varieties" and then for them to botch it this hard is impressive

[magnumkoishi]

it's honestly so disappointing to see the hair implemented this way

[bruiseberry]

this whole situation is wild. the design won for a reason, why on earth wouldn't they put it in the game how it's supposed to be designed?

i don't think it would be this upsetting if it was a random hairstyle introduced, but the fact that it's a changed up fan-made hairstyle is... let me just say it's weird, to put it lightly.

c'mon squenix, you're better than this, i hope.

[thekavseklabs]

Does the game handle curly hair like that well though? The pompadour and Affro are like 1 flat cylinder/ball with a texture not actually curls.

The thing is the artist had actually laid out the 'panels' of hair, just like every other hair in the game, in sheets. The hair they actually made is mechanically the same. They just made it stringy and wavy and weird instead of sticking to sets of tight curls that would have been wavy/bumpy sheets in the model with a texture on top to bring the curls to life. There are mods for this game with curly hair that I've seen pictures of, so we know it's possible.

[Velaneth]

This is offensive. I had to look up the contest winners to even realize which one it was supposed to be and when I figured it out my heart dropped. This is so far off the mark that it's an insult to the artist who put so much work and love into their submission. I know so many people who were looking forward to the submitted design, so hopeful for hair that finally resembles theirs, and for THIS to be what's released? My god. I'm just. Wow. Black people exist, devs. The continual erasure of anything to do with them at this point just feels... Well. Deliberate.

[Sated]

I didn't even realize it was supposed to be that hairstyle, it looks nothing like it at all.

This is really disappointing.