VIERA AND HROTHGAR COMPLAINT MEGATHREAD

[Fairymore]

I have always wondered, with the release of endwalker, why did the development team intentionally omit ALL male viera haircuts from being accessible to female vieras (and vice versa). I would have credited them with being immensely clever had they given viera fans both male bunnies and female vieras "viera unique" hairstyles all in one go. However they didnt do that and I am left as perplexed as before at their faint-hearted implementation of this race.

I would like every obtainable haircut available to female Vieras.
Wind Caller
Early to Rise
Saintly Style
Modern Legend
Samsonian Locks
Form and Function
Gyr Abanian Plait
Sharlayan Studies
Scion special Issue
Scion special Issue III
Master and Commander
Styled for Hire
Fashionably Feathered
Lexen Tails
Great Lengths
Curls
Adventure
Eternal Bonding

In addition to all the Male Viera haircuts. And I would also like alot of the default styles the other races from the begining.

[Minali]

I'd be careful with diminishing the work and skill of the people in the art team. That's like shouting at the guy who mixes the pizza dough for your pizza order being messed up. I don't want to defend sloppy work, but considering what else the art team can come up with, this smells a lot like horrible priorities given by the higher-ups. You only have so much time and effort to work with and if your boss' boss says you should spend this on parasol poses or new housing furniture, it doesn't matter how well you are able to model a character nor how much you would rather spend your time with this instead of the next potted plant. The priorities, the designs, what time is allowed to be invested in what.. this is nothing that an artist in a studio has any influence in. They can make suggestions and give feedback to their lead artist, the lead artist can forward those suggestions and maybe structure them/filter them and give an estimate on how much time it would take. But it is not up to any of them if a thing gets made. Same goes for community managers, programmers etc. btw. They are not the ones making decisions about stuff and just saying they all collectively are bad in their area of expertise is unfair and will not tackle the actual issue.

I am quite certain that this is a problem of giving these kinds of main characters a very low priority because they don't view it as "main character thing" but as "neat little side project". If they would redirect resources to this topic, I daresay we would get amazing well-thought results, especially if they analyze all the feedback given in this forum, on twitter etc. (There have been plenty of constructive suggestions, even concept art.) So please don't waste your time and energy shifting the blame on people who are not responsible for it.

[Midareyukki]

I'd be careful with diminishing the work and skill of the people in the art team. That's like shouting at the guy who mixes the pizza dough for your pizza order being messed up. I don't want to defend sloppy work, but considering what else the art team can come up with, this smells a lot like horrible priorities given by the higher-ups. You only have so much time and effort to work with and if your boss' boss says you should spend this on parasol poses or new housing furniture, it doesn't matter how well you are able to model a character nor how much you would rather spend your time with this instead of the next potted plant. The priorities, the designs, what time is allowed to be invested in what.. this is nothing that an artist in a studio has any influence in. They can make suggestions and give feedback to their lead artist, the lead artist can forward those suggestions and maybe structure them/filter them and give an estimate on how much time it would take. But it is not up to any of them if a thing gets made. Same goes for community managers, programmers etc. btw. They are not the ones making decisions about stuff and just saying they all collectively are bad in their area of expertise is unfair and will not tackle the actual issue.

We understand that. Here's what I hope people are aware of so far:
- Every decision needs to go through Yoshida. He's the one that ultimately approves it all.
- Even if he does, there are people around him that push for certain directions. He isn't in charge of everything in the game.
- The 3D team in general has been reduced. We know that certain stuff stopped being implemented overall because the member who could do it left the team.
- It may be that what we have at the moment is all that the remaining ones can do. Maybe they are good at making monster models or area models, but when it comes to character customization, they're not used to what they have to work with.

However someone needs to be blamed so there's attention brought to it. Even if said "blame" is diffuse and spread out. What I mean by this is:
- Hairstyles don't fit the races.
- Players cannot wear headgear that would fit them under fears of "clipping".
- Hrothgar ears are attached to the head, unlike other races where the ears are a part of the hairstyle
- To make Hrothgar hairstyles work in Jandelaine, the dev team had to double each individual head rather than decoupling the hair from the head. Meaning that when you go into Jandelaine, you're not changing hairstyles. You're changing your head.
- To make hairstyles work for Hrothgar, they didn't adjust the hair itself but instead shrunk Hrothgar heads
- The file organization and the way parts go into each race is messy and inconsistent. Which makes the problem worse when you try to tweak something on the races.

1/2

[Midareyukki]

cont

So there are ultimately 3 people we can attribute blame for this:
- The people who made these races in the first place, whose laissez-faire attitude and shoddy\inconsistent work came to bite them in the end. But, naturally, they're constrained by their own know-how and the decisions of higher ups. It's why crunching doesn't work in the long run, and we know Yoshida counted their bathroom breaks to ridiculous levels. He said so himself.
- To Yoshida himself, who approved of this and possibly pushed for his team to work under those conditions. But he's constrained by how much he knows of how a department works. Meaning his faith in the 3D modelling team is based off of "Well, it works, doesn't it?" and not "Oh, the way you guys did it isn't the best and it's now causing tremendous problems". He's also constrained by higher-ups or peers.
- Said higher-ups and peers, who definitely don't know how the game works and is designed and just want the money.

I think Yoshida is at least aware that the races are not well done. Hence why he wants to rehaul and upscale the base races and get to Expansion Races later on. But the issue is that the longer this drags out, the worse it's going to be for his team to properly clean up. And even harsher will be the outlash the players of the races that are suffering the most, which are NOT the base races, because they'll be playing an inferior product even longer.

The "Main Character" issue is a whole 'nother monster. Viera portrayal has been lacklustre, but Hrothgar teeters on either "too cute for this world" or violent and disgraced. Or just plain traitorous. There's no worse display of this than Bozja overall, where characters are either Bajsaljen and Marsak, fed to monsters\Misija's mind-control and disfiguration, everything involving Dabog... or everything involving the original Blades of Gunnhildr.
But we're not the only ones. Roegadyn also suffer from this, with the only two sympathetic "secondary characters" being either dead (Moen) or disgraced and having to pursue another lifestyle (Gosetsu).

The only ones to have consistently positive protrayal and a good main role have been Elezen and Miqo'te. Even the "cheeky bastard" type Lalafell are redeemed by having predominantly good characters consistently show up.

But as I said, that's another can of worms. The real issue is who to blame for the customization. And unfortunately, we need to place blame on someone, otherwise nothing will ever get done.

[SasakiItou-Malboro]

I'm only temporarily a hour, but I always play as a male Viera. I honestly think ALL HATS that have been added since the release of Viera and hrothgar SHOULD have been made accessible for them. Makes no damn sense that they haven't.

[Adamantini]

I'm only temporarily a hour, but I always play as a male Viera. I honestly think ALL HATS that have been added since the release of Viera and hrothgar SHOULD have been made accessible for them. Makes no damn sense that they haven't.

This. Please if you can and want, I'm trying to get as many people together as possible to add a protest in their signatures about the hats. So we don't need to open multiple threads about it, it will be a silent protest in every post we make.
If you don't want to create something from scratch, you can copy my signature.

[SasakiItou-Malboro]

I'm only temporarily a hour, but I always play as a male Viera. I honestly think ALL HATS that have been added since the release of Viera and hrothgar SHOULD have been made accessible for them. Makes no damn sense that they haven't.

Hyur* stupid autocorrect

[LuciaMirain]

I was gonna fantasia back to viera and then I remembered we are getting new gear soon where the hats wont work on her anyway....and I really want that hat. Sadge. Ive seen how the Lyse hair looks on viera and it is gorgeous so it is tempting but....no hats...

[MRBJ1978]

Why is it SE that the Archfiend head armor you get from PvP that is an "exclusive reward" for the new seasonal content doesn't show up on Viera, although it does on Hrothgar, and the Ktiseos dungeon version of almost the exact same helmet that is not a "special seasonal reward" does show up on Viera?! What is y'all's problem?!

[Adamantini]

Why is it SE that the Archfiend head armor you get from PvP that is an "exclusive reward" for the new seasonal content doesn't show up on Viera, although it does on Hrothgar, and the Ktiseos dungeon version of almost the exact same helmet that is not a "special seasonal reward" does show up on Viera?! What is y'all's problem?!

Don't talk about them like that! They are doing their best! Be patient, it's such a hard job. Not that I haven't already posted here, a photo I found on twitter of a person who made this helmet work in vieras. Far from it, it's all a lie