Regarding Hrothgar and Benchmark

[Kaelk]

I'm gonna highly suggest waiting until Shadowbringers is officially released before you pick up your torch and pitchforks. Yoshi-P himself stated the benchmark had a chance of not even being released this month. More than likely they wanted to release it alongside the live letter, and thus weren't able to get everything they wanted in. Immediately believing what we're seeing in a benchmark is the absolute final finished product is being blatantly ignorant. Now if Hrothgar were fully released with their current lack of options, THEN I'd agree with the disappointment. But until then I'm not going to kneejerk myself off a cliff.

My original hope was that they decided to cut that corner in an effort to get the Benchmark out sooner than later. That hope was dashed when I saw that a number of the facial feature options were tied to the hairstyle the face had. I'm reserving final judgement for the release, but right now, I am rather disappointed in what I am seeing.

Hrothgar got way to many options and features, the fangs, the fur, different tattoos/horns on some faces, tail slider/different tails, etc....

I doesnt surprise me that they had to cut the resources somewhere and I guess it would of been difficult to fix all those hairstyles on that face of Hroth's.
Might just be my opinion, but its fine as it is. I do not want Hrothgar taking more resources and time, rather see them spend on older races.

Then again, female Viera had only their race hairstyles as well, so they might appear later in the character creator?

Hrothgar got no more customization than any other race, and because of the face/hair issue, they got significantly less.

Yes, they have the addition of fur patterns, an option that is covered by 90% of the gear in the game, so it you want to show that off, glamour options are severely limited. The hair color is determined by the fur color, and being able to customize the pattern color has meant they removed the option for hair highlights, so there was a trade-off.

Fangs? There are three options, none, short, or long. The trade off is that there is no "Mouth" option, which every other race has and has four options.

Tattoos are tied to the face chosen, same as all races, no additional customization there.

Horns? That's a face customization option, which Hrothgar have the same number as every other race, many of which are "hair" customization options with the addition of a braid or another tuft of hair.

Tails? Exact same options available as Mi'qote and Au'ra, no additional customization.

Ultimately however, my only actual complaint is the face/hair and that we are essentially limited to two hairstyles. You pick a face, you get hair A or hair B, that's it, maybe a couple options in your facial fatures. As I said above, I will reserve any real displeasure until I see a final product, but as it stands right now, a face and hair combination is the easiest way to create a character that looks different from the others of your race and if those of us wanting to play Hrothgar lose that option, they have limited variety to essentially 8 options for Hrothgar.

Yes, Viera had racial hairstyles only, however, the hairstyles weren't tied to a specific face, leading to a potential 68 combinations of face/hair. Even if you take the fact that some of the hairstyles are just slight adjustments, leaving 9 unique hairstyles, that is still 36 variants. It would also stand to reason that Viera will have the option of vanity rewards and Mog Station items, even if not immediately, eventually. It is also ignoring the fact that Viera have access to Hair highlights, which allows them to further differentiate themselves from the rest of the Viera running around.

[Skivvy]

I'm thinking (hoping?) that this is just showing an in-progress character creator. With the Viera, you're supposed to be able to right-click to add/hide bangs, but currently all styles are shown as their own individual option. The Viera /laugh emote I'm a bit more worried about as their mouth doesn't open. Hopefully that's just a placeholder as well D:

[Jeeqbit]

They can expand on some of these options later if they want to.

Why don't we just be happy they are giving us something new?

[Mikki]

Am I the only one who is irked by the fact that their belly buttons are visible and also find their human feet to be totally mismatched?

[Rokke]

(Also did I miss it or is there no wolf face? All I see is just different lion ones)

In hindsight, that interview now sounds more like the animals mentioned (wolves, lions, etc) were the pool of animals they were deciding between. The options we got are all pretty feline looking, and the lore blurb only mentions lions so lions won out.

[Halivel]

I watched a youtube video about the heavensward benchmark and yes the Au Ra only had their racial hairstyle in it, so at least for the Viera they will probably get the missing ones. The problem with the Hrothgar is, that they have no separate "hair style" button instead they have the one with fur. Which would mean that SE changed the whole benchmark just for that which would be strange. If they are able to choose hair why not have the button avaiable?

I just checked my old HW bench and I have bad news: they had every haircut that was available on 3.0 release.

https://imgur.com/tew3D6t

[Alleo]

I just checked my old HW bench and I have bad news: they had every haircut that was available on 3.0 release.

https://imgur.com/tew3D6t

Yeah someone mentioned this and sadly it seems to be true. Hopefully that does not mean that we wont even get the rest for the female Vieras..because then I wont change because changing hair is important for the looks of a character and it would cheapen getting hairstyles as rewards too.

[AmaroLeBlanc]

I am really disappointed by SE for doing this. Not just the face/hairstyle combo thing on Hrothgar, but the hair lock on both new races is an absolute no go for me. It would really bother me, if I had to choose between all my bought and unlocked hairstyles and a cool new race.
Gladly, thats not how SE seems to think and work. I believe that they will give their customers what they paid for. Otherwise, they have to expect a shitstorm extraordinaire.

Well, I was able to create a Hrothgar that I deemed acceptable for a racechange. I will be satisfied as long as he will be able to wear the Cid Googles from the Mogshop. =D