Current state of Viera and Hrothgar

[AbrahmEden]

I think being outwardly antagonistic towards the developers in threads like these isn't constructive, regardless of level of frustration.

My impression, as an outsider looking in, is that the development team is stretched thin (particularly with what I assume is a large portion of the graphical team assigned to the updates), because Square-Enix corporate still views FFXIV as a "salvage project", and uses that as an excuse to keep CS3 on a shoestring budget.

I would love to be proven wrong, and to be shown differently, but years of following Live Letters and the game's development seems to make this clear. While it gives the game a sort of underdog credibility, it also isn't good optics for a company to take their best-selling product (which IIRC made nearly a quarter of their yearly revenue in the fiscal year of Endwalker's release) and neglect it in favor of risky ventures like consistently-failing mobile game development.

FFXIV may bring in a large sum of money, but I doubt the team sees much of that invested back into the game.

Yoshida refuses to crunch his team and mandates limited work hours, and for the most part remains transparent and candid about development, which is a reason I admire him as a producer-- this is rare in the games industry in the west, let alone in Japan.

I agree the hole they're digging is deep, and somewhat disconcerting. If this is being worked on in the background, why not dripfeed out updated hats? My only thought is there's a certain development milestone goal, such as the majority of hairstyles implemented for Hrothgar and Viera of both genders, where they'll all be released at once? That possibly releasing a new hairstyle that hadn't been prepped prior would cause things to break? It does that to the mod, apparently-- hats will display with an unadapted hairstyle, but the models appear "peeled" with the hairstyle underneath not rendering.

Admittedly, with a rudimentary level of knowledge of the workflow (i.e. what goes into the mod that enables the hats to be displayed), and game development in general, I'm trying to rationalize it-- it would be extremely beneficial if there was an official statement clarifying the development, plan, targeted release, logistics, complications, etc.

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Edit: Here are a couple deductions based on what I know of the workflow and requirements for hat implementation. I chose to edit here in lieu of making a second post.

Clipping has been floated as a reason, but I'm not sure what the source of that reasoning is. I vaguely remember it being mentioned, and it's likely a factor, but definitely not the only factor here.

There are roughly four or five types of headwear in the game:
-Full-face helms without a visor feature that completely replace the head model
-Mostly-full helms, armets, and hoods that cull the hair model, and the head model is mostly replaced save for the face (ex. Dragoon artifact helms; newer ones may display on Hroth/Viera)
-Hats that display more of the face and neck, but still cull the hair model (ex. Zormor Turbans, which display on Hroth/Viera; these may be the same as the former)
-Hats that partially cull the hair model (ex. BLM/RDM Artifact hats; none of these partial-culling hats display on Hroth/Viera)
-Hats and facewear that don't cull the hair model (ex. YoRHa Type-51 hats, Varsity Flat Cap, Circlets, Glasses, etc.)

For every piece of headwear that culls part of the hair model, every hairstyle has to be hand-checked and adjusted. This would give reason to not release a hat until all planned (and existing) hairstyles had been implemented for that hat, lest a player use an incompatible hairstyle and the hat or hairstyle suddenly not display correctly.

For Hrothgar, the shape of the head and dimensions of the neck require the size and shape of all hats to be adjusted, in particular armets and face-showing helms that encompass a large amount of the face. The dimensions of male Hrothgar faces are somewhat varied, so I am assuming a great deal of checking would need to go into their dimensions. I know this was a lot of work for the hat modder.

For Viera, the position and angle of the ears likely has to be checked individually, even if they clip through a hat or helmet, to make sure they look passable (you would want them adjusted so they weren't clipping through a supporting piece of a helm's frame, for example). It's a different problem; I'm assuming the facial shape being similar to the other races makes it so the hairstyles are easier to check and the core dimensions of headwear need less adjusting, but the prominence of the ears is an entirely separate area. I agree that, for the most part, clipping here is fine, but position should be adjusted if necessary.

The mod publisher has lamented recently that vertex data for hats they have already checked and implemented has been changed, which sparked another realization: if hats are still being changed in the graphical update, and not just their textures, but their models being significantly altered, it would make sense from a work standpoint for the team not to update them for the newer races until the models and textures were finalized, to avoid having to do the same work twice. I'm under the impression that this is also why female Hrothgar were delayed until 7.0, after it was decided during Endwalker's development that the graphical engine would be updated; why create an entire suite of lower-quality assets that are just going to be thrown away for graphically-updated ones, when the team is stretched thin as it is?

QC is obviously a lot more stringent on official products, and has to pass a lot more checks than an unsupported mod. Red tape can be arduous, and if a team lead (or even Yoshida himself) isn't happy with the result, it can be sent back. They don't want a repeat of the Hrothgar ears incident.

Speaking of which, I can only assume that the chopping off of the Hrothgar ears in a previous 6.x patch was somehow related to the way hairstyles needed to be checked; Yoshida mentioned something about it being an "easier method" during the subsequent Live Letter after the backlash, and one that "was not acceptable to the community", so it was reversed.

I'll admit, I'm giving the team the benefit of the doubt here-- they're real humans, likely working 40+ hour weeks, so they deserve to be respected-- but I'd definitely prefer a real answer over this kind of speculation. They have to be aware that Hroth and Viera players aren't satisfied with the current situation, and I think voicing discontent on the forums (in a constructive way) is valuable. After all, it's about all we can do.

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Edit 2: As an addendum, when I was considering the Phoenix Riser and Vanguard Fending helms and their (somewhat amusing) Viera ear socks, it was brought to my attention that certain full-face helms (like the Archfiend Helm) simply don't display on Viera, and that the reason may be that as full-replacement helms, they would be non-uniform in terms of programming if they referenced (called) an element from the player's head, and would be unable to replace the entire head model cleanly without either chopping the ears off, or a model adjustment for the ears.

If this is the case, it's entirely possible there is significant modeling required (or even planned) for armor over Viera ears on full-face "head replacement" helms.

As a Hrothgar player, I've noticed two things in Dawntrail: there's been a general movement toward more "type 5" headpieces (ones that don't cull hair at all, like circlets and hairpins); and that all headpieces introduced in 7.0 that are full-face, hair-culling, or non-hair-culling actually work on Hrothgar, with only ones that partially cull hair being absent (though these are admittedly the majority of head pieces).

Are there any headpieces introduced in 7.0/7.1 that work on Hrothgar but don't work on Viera, or vice versa? Are there any full-head-replacement helms introduced that don't work on Viera?