Viera and Hrothgar Megathread

[glitteringcosmos]

Ear shape and length? Lalafell and elezen get that too.

Would also like to note how static Viera ears are, to the point where it's almost unnatural. They don't need to have full physics like Miqo ears do but they're NOT the same in form as Lala/Elezen ears, either. Just a little bit of sway when then head moves would be more than sufficient.

[reivaxe]

Their stance hasn’t changed but a big issue here is they also claimed that trading away headgear (and later announced- hair) was going to let us go “all out” with customization of these races, which was flat out misleading. These races have less customization overall than the other races. For viera you’d think the difference would be made up in the ear and hair options but it really wasn’t. Every “new thing” we got to customize was superficially different from other races and barebones at that.

Ear shape and length? Lalafell and elezen get that too. And we got only four options, same as them. Hairstyle options with and without bangs is also nothing new to the other races. For viera, that’s pretty much it, aside from looking a little more polished than the other races. If they don’t intend to follow through by fixing the races so that we do actually get a ton of customization, then they should find a way work us into reward systems and headgear. Because the trade off currently is non-existant.

That's a poor way of looking at that.
Lala and Elezen ears are attached to the sides of their heads, they don't mess up anything as they are not gigantic or hugely different. Viera having massive ears on the top of their heads that they can customize is very much the core design problem with them being given anything. To understand that you have to look at Miqote, the only other race with ears anywhere other than the side of their faces. Kitty ears are a part of their hairstyles, they can't change them in any way. Their race's "uniqueness" came more so from the tails that the devs refuse to let be hidden in 99% of gear.

They chose to give Viera ear customization because it's literally the only unique trait they have and every design approach I've personally come up with to make hats work on them and not look poop is either to turn off the ears or have only 1 pair that can't be customized that's a part of their hair like Miqotes. As it stands now they if they want to show the ears when wearing hats they would have to make 4 versions of SOMETHING to accommodate the player's choice, and they don't do that for any character model in the game. This is what he meant by "it would be useless if you can't go all out". If the only unique thing about the race is the bunny ears it would be strange if you couldn't customize them fully.

Hrothgar are, like I've said on this forum, a case of the Monkey's Paw. They have legit a ton of CC features no other race gets but at the cost of 1 of the fundamental features we've come to expect (Hair) as well as hats.

[BunniEclair]

snip

They have already disproven the “they’d have to make 4 models” thing themselves by allowing the ears to clip through helmets and hoods. This is because the issue isn’t really the ears, which all share the same base shape and size. As seen with the new dungeon helms, they are also more than capable of and willing to make the ears disappear for helms that it would be appropriate for. If you ever look at what helmets viera can wear something they all have in common is that they are headgear that make the hair completely disappear.

This is because it’s the racially unique hair, which they did not model “hat versions” for that is the issue. So you can get away with helmets because it makes sense for the wearer to tuck away hair when donning them. A little harder to explain away why your bunny is suddenly bald when putting on a wizard hat.

Though my issue isn’t really with hats, necessarily, unless they are the big reward for an event because....well I can’t use them, so that sucks. I take more issue with them hyping up the new races to have all of this customization to make up for the lack of gear that they just didn’t come through on. I can think of several ways they could have offered additional customization to make the viera feel more robust and unique. But where they stand right now, they had a lot more customization taken away than they got in exchange for a few ear models. And the hair thing is even more frustrating- both in their failure to make time to add more unique ones and also in their refusal to make the slight adjustments necessary to allow viera to have the unlockable ones offered as rewards.

[SturmChurro]

They have already disproven the “they’d have to make 4 models” thing themselves by allowing the ears to clip through helmets and hoods. This is because the issue isn’t really the ears, which all share the same base shape and size. As seen with the new dungeon helms, they are also more than capable of and willing to make the ears disappear for helms that it would be appropriate for. If you ever look at what helmets viera can wear something they all have in common is that they are headgear that make the hair completely disappear.

This is because it’s the racially unique hair, which they did not model “hat versions” for that is the issue. So you can get away with helmets because it makes sense for the wearer to tuck away hair when donning them. A little harder to explain away why your bunny is suddenly bald when putting on a wizard hat.

Though my issue isn’t really with hats, necessarily, unless they are the big reward for an event because....well I can’t use them, so that sucks. I take more issue with them hyping up the new races to have all of this customization to make up for the lack of gear that they just didn’t come through on. I can think of several ways they could have offered additional customization to make the viera feel more robust and unique. But where they stand right now, they had a lot more customization taken away than they got in exchange for a few ear models. And the hair thing is even more frustrating- both in their failure to make time to add more unique ones and also in their refusal to make the slight adjustments necessary to allow viera to have the unlockable ones offered as rewards.

Bald, and no ears on the side of their heads. That would be super jarring to look at. Like Humpty Dumpty wearing a hat or something.

[reivaxe]

They have already disproven the “they’d have to make 4 models” thing themselves by allowing the ears to clip through helmets and hoods.

Yeah, they let the ears clip through hoods and like 1 helm ... and it looks poop. It always looks poop. The race would look even more extra poop if they let Viera wear the 100s of hats in the game by taking the stance of "just let it clip".
This is a design decision by them to have visuals they're happy with and respect the racial choice of the player, never said it was a "tech issue". The only tech issue is the fact that they seem to think making hats not look like clippy poop with the ears requires too much work.

In order to make hats and helms not look like poop on the race they would have to accommodate the 4 ears or turn them off, simple as that.

This is because it’s the racially unique hair, which they did not model “hat versions” for that is the issue. So you can get away with helmets because it makes sense for the wearer to tuck away hair when donning them. A little harder to explain away why your bunny is suddenly bald when putting on a wizard hat.

They didn't make hat hair models because they never intended to give them hats because they made the race that way. That's not the cause of the "problem", that's the result of their decision ... no reason to make hat hair if you're not going to make hats work on them.

I take more issue with them hyping up the new races to have all of this customization to make up for the lack of gear that they just didn’t come through on.

I don't believe he "hyped it up" so much as tossed out a line about it that people latched onto. Hrothgar DO have a ton of CC options that no other race has at the cost of hair ... Viera's only "thing" is being humans with bunny ears so they "went all out" on the ears (even allowing for the bent ears that look ugly af) and decided to have alt versions of hair be the norm. These are new, unique things, and they came at as a result of how they made these races. Was it worth it? IMO no, they should have realized this weeby fanbase just wanted "cute bunny girls! ;D" and woulda taken Miqos with longer ears and 4 different bun tails.

But what's done is done, by releasing these races this way they've made a situation where in they can't easily change course unless they make a massive NGS shift in CC and graphics engine OR decide to just turn off the parts that give them problems. (For Viera it's the ears ... for Hrothgar it's just the mane. Hrothgar heads are not shaped in any way that stops hats from working on them and their ears get turned off for hoods, they simply seem to not want to only partly cover the mane).

[Yencat]

They talked about the customization of both and the challenges/work involved before they were even released.

Helmets and such were not working with the already created systems. Anything that replaces the head will. Hairstyles are the same coding principle as helmets as the head isn't being replaced.

If their stance has changed since then, then I missed it and stand corrected. But that was the main issue I remember reading about concerning customizing both races and their limitations.

I wish they'd been even half as transparent as this.

They said that the decision to not make headgear available was because we would have plenty of "unique customization options" and without headgear we could really "go all out on creating new characters with these races".

He told them to create Hrothgar without worrying about making the hairstyles currently available in the game to work on them to really get their 'beast race' vision across. Since Hrothgar hairstyles are tied to faces during character creation they were going to be adding new faces with hair for them.

Viera were originally supposed to get access to some of the legacy hairstyles, then later that changed to only getting unique hairstyles.

There was never a "maybe" or "very difficult" about it, he even said they were "prepared to do so" after launch of the expansion.

[DBriggs304]

Their stance hasn’t changed but a big issue here is they also claimed that trading away headgear (and later announced- hair) was going to let us go “all out” with customization of these races, which was flat out misleading. These races have less customization overall than the other races. For viera you’d think the difference would be made up in the ear and hair options but it really wasn’t. Every “new thing” we got to customize was superficially different from other races and barebones at that.

Ear shape and length? Lalafell and elezen get that too. And we got only four options, same as them. Hairstyle options with and without bangs is also nothing new to the other races. For viera, that’s pretty much it, aside from looking a little more polished than the other races. If they don’t intend to follow through by fixing the races so that we do actually get a ton of customization, then they should find a way work us into reward systems and headgear. Because the trade off currently is non-existant.

Ahh, then that makes sense now as I wasn't fully aware of the all out stance. Almost sounds like a tradeoff that never really materialized.

[Penthea]

Ahh, then that makes sense now as I wasn't fully aware of the all out stance. Almost sounds like a tradeoff that never really materialized.

Which is the root of the problem that has lead to many unhappy players. We pay the same sub, complete the same content and pay the same fee for fantasia, but literally get significantly less visual options compared to the pre-ShB races. And this is made worse by SE's extremely long silence on the topic after telling us what would be coming.

We weren't even given something small like racial hats only we could use. Surely if SE have time to design so many hairstyles and hats for the pre-ShB races they have time to design a handful of hats specifically for hrothgar and viera. It's been almost two years and we haven't gotten the tiniest scrap to even vaguely make up for the disparity that we were promised wouldn't stay so huge forever. Instead the disparity has gotten even bigger due to the pre-ShB races consistently getting new head related options.

[Yencat]

Would also like to note how static Viera ears are, to the point where it's almost unnatural. They don't need to have full physics like Miqo ears do but they're NOT the same in form as Lala/Elezen ears, either. Just a little bit of sway when then head moves would be more than sufficient.

There's a decent bit of movement in them, but how noticeable it is really depends on the shape you choose.

When I had the type 1 ears (the thicker ones that fold backwards) I barely noticed any movement, but I've had the type 4 ears (pointy ones with no fluff) for a long time now and I was surprised how much movement there was at first.

There's a little bounce in them with every step you run, when you're jumping, gathering etc. It's especially noticeable when flying, to the point it almost looks painful how much they're bending in the wind lol

[WhiteArchmage]

There's a decent bit of movement in them, but how noticeable it is really depends on the shape you choose.

When I had the type 1 ears (the thicker ones that fold backwards) I barely noticed any movement, but I've had the type 4 ears (pointy ones with no fluff) for a long time now and I was surprised how much movement there was at first.

There's a little bounce in them with every step you run, when you're jumping, gathering etc. It's especially noticeable when flying, to the point it almost looks painful how much they're bending in the wind lol

I have those ears, sprinting as a Ninja is... funny lol they flop all over the place.