Quote Originally Posted by Iscah View Post
This is all speculation but I don't think it's to do with "space and processing power", I think it's to do with the character template options (as I was saying above re. Auri horns).

They wanted to give fur pattern options, something that hasn't existed for any other race, so they had to repurpose the hairstyle setting (and the linked base colour and highlight colour palettes). Instead of choosing a hairstyle with highlights, Hrothgar choose a fur pattern with stripes.

So fur patterns go in the hairstyle "slot" and the manes have to go in the face slot.

I also think the lack of hats is due to this - when a normal character wears a hat, it turns off part of the hairstyle. But that doesn't work for Hrothgar because the "setting in the hairstyle slot" isn't their hair, and hats aren't programmed to affect the face slot, so it can't turn it off and would clip through instead.

So that would explain why Hrothgar can wear a helmet that replaces the head model entirely (so there's no mane underneath to clip through), but not one that sits over it.
It's not an "either/ or" thing, they literally used memory as a reason in the PAX stream.
They did what they did with the slots to make their vision come to fruition. In order to make room for fur stuff to happen they had to leave out hair. I read this post as a "the chicken or the egg" problem, doesn't matter what you think the cause is when we can see that Fur took the place of hair and normal hair or heads that could wear hats and helms was never something YP wanted them to have.