Gonna go out on a limb...

[SturmChurro]

I get the feeling they just gave us the racial hairstyles to play with, we'll likely see everything be usable at launch.

That's my feeling too. If I'm being honest, I don't even care if that isn't the case! I think Viera have the nicest racial hairstyles out! When I was miqo'te for a couple months I only used 2 hairstyles total!

[Kadrothan]

If this game has taught me anything, is it’s better to be cynical first and be pleasantly surprised later if it turns out better. Seen too many unfulfilled promises to think this is going to get much better.

[Fawkes]

I can't remember completely but didn't people think the HW cc was limited but turned out to be the full suite of options?

People were upset Au Ra faces and horns were tied together, and then it turned out their faces and horns were tied together.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

Ill stay optimistic. Maybe we have limited Hairstyles, maybe we'll see more options on release. Maybe.
But I'll bet they fitted enough Headgear that Ill find some good glamours to make up for it. Over 500 or so Headgear items, fitted they said. They might get more done later, so as disappointing as this Benchmark is, I think it will be fine in the end.
Hell we can also look foreword to Patches. (not the spider)

[Reimmi]

Kinda wish they put the new race dev time into new options for current races, if this is what we were gonna get
More hair, more faces, the coveted butt slider/bulge everyone seems to want, etc

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

On the Other hand, Yeah the Viera are Pretty, I might Turn my Main into one.

[SilverObi]

People were upset Au Ra faces and horns were tied together, and then it turned out their faces and horns were tied together.

Yep so I'd advise people to not get their hopes up that this is just a sneak peek and is very likely the final presentation of options. Or guarded at least.

[Tempest222]

A lot of people didn’t think Viera would be female only at first either, and assumed they just hadn’t shown the males when they revealed viera... and we saw how that turned out. Personally I feel I’ve been around the block enough over the years with various games to never assume I’ll ever get more than what I’ve been shown. If the benchmark is simply an incomplete representation then that would be great, but I very sincerely doubt that’s the case. Just like how Au’ra have horns locked to faces, hrothgar have hair locked to faces, and that’s more than likely just the way of it.

Also viera don’t even really have as many hair options as it appears because most of them have 2 of the same hair, one with bangs and one without. So technically different styles but not much variety.

[Allegor]

The Hrothgar weren't even ready for presentation at the Japanese fanfest (like legit Yoshi-P made a comment that they had only been finished enough for the reveal the day before) and they mentioned they wanted to do a wolf head on top of the more feline options. My best guess is that they just plain old ran out of time and had to make due with what they had. It'd be nice if we get more options but at this point I have a feeling this is it.

There's no way they didn't foresee Hrothgar face being tied to the hair being badly received, specially after the feedback on Au Ra for the exact same problem. I know why they're doing it, but honestly, I wouldn't mind if they delayed launch by a few weeks or so if it meant more time and less stress for the team to do stuff...properly, to put it bluntly.

Also, I can understand Hrothgars being iffy, but Viera? aren't they - in this context - just Miqo with longer ears? I don't see why they wouldn't be able to use the other universal hairstyles and just slap the ears on top

[Omegakiyohime]

The CC gods giveth and they taketh. I'd eat my hat if hairstyles weren't locked to faces at this point. Seems like they're treating Fur pattern+color as hair, which is sad given the lack of visibility of it in 90% of the gear in the game. I'd guess that they have a strict budget in terms of the amount of player character data that they send and "Fur pattern + highlights + color" more or less "fit" into the places that "Hairstyle, highlights, and color" did. If that sounds incoherent, then I blame a general lack of sleep on my part.