Hair contest: petitioning

[LunaHoshino]

My only complaint is that for a contest that was supposed to be about showcasing creativity and originality, there sure is a lot of similarity in what made the cut for the finalists. A lot of them are either variations on styles we already have in-game or variations of each other... do we really need multiple side ponytails in the running? There are five different versions of a side ponytail/side-tied hair for the female hairstyles-- that's more than a little ridiculous. I was hoping the devs would pick a better diversity of styles, since there clearly was an impressive selection to choose from if the other thread is any indication.

[StiriaNix]

Well based on what Mami stated the contest is indeed broken. They did bullet point originality as one key aspect of this contest and having Quistis, Warrior of light minion hairstyle and a photographed Roxas wig clearly shows how broken the selection process was. They could have been implemented those hairstyles at any moment without the need of their fans to submit it to a contest and made them available as micro purchases. Having 3 of the same style essentially dwarfs available entry options and potential variety which clearly indicates that the developers are biased towards side pony tails. The other thing there was no automated email system setup confirming your entry.

[dice137]

Luckily, I believe this entry has been removed.

[KleeneOnigiri]

My design was shown off in the livestream (male no.13) and made it into the contest. There may have been others but I simply didn't bother to check.

Ah! Thanks for pointing that out.
Maybe the others weren't chosen because they posted it on social media... I bet a lot of hairstyles weren't chosen because of that?

[StrejdaTom]

i don't understand.
it was said that the finalists were to be picked by developers based on creativity, originality and skill.
i for one am happy with the top 30 male and female designs.i didn't like them all, but the ones i did got my like.simple as that

This. I don't agree with most of the hairstyles that made it into the voting but devs have their own taste for hairstyles and we have to respect it.
I also believe they picked hairstyles that are probably easily implementable and won't clip too much.

[Serilda]

I feel bad for the entrants whose designs were chosen for the voting as all of this negativity and criticism has got to be detracting from what should be a happy occasion for them (except for the people who plagiarised pictures, they don't deserve sympathy). Personally speaking, neither of my designs were chosen but as one was an afro (I'm stupid and forgot they were already working on this) and the other was something that wouldn't have won many kind comments in the voting, I'm less shocked than most of my fellow losers. I'd have liked to have that style, but I still enjoyed voting on the alternatives since I never expected to be chosen anyway.

There are lots of reasons why the lovely designs which didn't make it through might not have been selected, though, and I think it's important to consider them. First and foremost, designs which coincidentally happened to resemble hairstyles the dev team are already working on would have probably been dismissed outright. It's unfair since players have no way to tell, but I imagine that the design team already has a bunch of 'must have' designs (like the legendary afro) they want to implement from time to time in patches, and if they've already started working on their version then it wouldn't make sense to let a similar style win the competition and detract from their upcoming announcements. In other words, simple bad luck could be involved.

Then there are some stunning designs which look beautiful, but it's hard to figure out how they actually work. This is especially the case with more abstract 2D art where the illustrator can cheat with perspective and proportion to make something fantastic on paper which would look terrible in 3D. People have been complaining over the notes on some of the shortlisted drawings but they really help; if they can tell that the designer is going to have to contact the winner again to ask how it works, well, it's going to be too much effort when there are hundreds of other entries to choose instead. Some don't show how the hair wraps around ears (of any kind), or how it looks from different angles, and in some the back view doesn't look like the same hairstyle as the front view.

A few of the great designs which weren't selected have obvious problems working around Miqo'te ears due to the positioning of various elements or partings. I know a few of the selected designs have this issue too, especially with Au Ra and Miqo'te, but it's possible that the designers felt they would be easier to implement based on previous experience.

The complaints about there being too many Japanese entrants make no sense to me. The game is promoted much more widely in Japan and awareness of the competition would have been widespread. The developers are mostly Japanese too and accustomed to Japanese tastes, so given that they probably received a significantly larger number of Japanese entries than any other it's not surprising quite a few made it through to this stage. It's annoying that they didn't translate the comments into all four languages though; how many non-speakers realised that the seventh female entry was supposed to resemble a moogle's pom and ears without the annotations before moving on? Again, if the entrants had known how their designs would be presented they might have annotated their drawings very differently.

Ultimately I'm just really happy they ran this contest. Even if they pick the 'worst' submissions it's still more hairstyles in the game to choose from, and if the contest goes well they could run it again in future to give us more sorely-needed character customisation choices. It's good that the community is questioning some of the more dubious things like the plagiarised designs (I'm glad that the stolen one was disqualified) and praising some of the alternate designs people submitted which were overlooked, but hearing people take out their frustrations on the people who worked hard on their entries, or making xenophobic remarks about too many Japanese drawings - based on assumptions - really bites.

[Dalvy]

Majority of complaints focus on how many of the entries just... Look so similar to what we already have. There are some that certainly stand out for being unique, but what's the point of adding in a pony or bun style, when that is already among current choices? If they're worried about clipping during animation, yet another pony style is not a prime choice. Just look at the lightning style...

[Nestama]

Like I said before, my complaint towards the hairstyle options is that majority of them would not look good on a Roegadyn (unless they choose a particular face, but even then majority would look weird on a muscle man).

[Shori]

Like I said before, my complaint towards the hairstyle options is that majority of them would not look good on a Roegadyn (unless they choose a particular face, but even then majority would look weird on a muscle man).

I agree!
And same for the women styles realy. Only 2 suit a butch/warrior style female and theyre waaay behind in votes because of they didnt seperate NA, JP, EU entries n threads so theres an abundance of 'kawaii' and ripoffs.

[Tahri]

This thread is really upsetting.
I had a hard time choosing a style I liked to vote, because none of them were really me, but I chose the one that had the most elements of what I would like implemented in the future.
No matter who is chosen as the finalists people will be upset their favourite didn't make it. A petition is pointless and this amount of backlash only goes to show the devs that they shouldn't hold contests like this in the future.
What about the people who were chosen? They must be so happy and I'm sure all this hate is so hard to deal with.