VIERA AND HROTHGAR COMPLAINT MEGATHREAD

[Starshower]

Well, they will never stop to play the game because of that (see all the people who said "If there will not a male viera, I will stop to play FFXIV" and they insta used fantasia to female viera in shadowbringers.
But I canot agree with you, when you say "the game quality has no sign of being worse". Since Shadowbringers, I sense they are less and less worried with details. Miqo'te, lalafell and elezen had no ears in a lot of hats, a lot of items in EW are just recolours, The history had a lot of problems (like it was rushed, or they removed some content and forget to fix properly), and others.
This lack of ears in hrothgar don't take me surprised. Unfortunately, I noticed that they have the money they want, and now they will work less (every game has the same story). I'm happy with my male viera, but I know my race will only be complete with a lot of mods. 3 years and you received 6 bad hairs with no ears (like miqo'te, elezen and lalafell hats in SHB)... I really wanted they are saying the truth, when they say "I will stop to play FFXIV". Maybe this way, SE return to pay attention in details once more.

the only problem with viera in general is a lack of hats (that is, as soon as they get all of the other hairstyles). The first patch always seems to have less content than the rest of the game, it was the same in shadowbringers launch patch. The stuff they showed in the roadmap seems to be really promising, and it looks like it will answer a lot of desires players have been having (2 ultimates, deep dungeon, hard 4 man content, hildibrand) those things were the main contents players have been asking for in shadowbringers. If they release all of those, by the end endwalker would have been better content wise than shadowbringers, which would be quality up. But you are right, shadowbringers had 2 more unique dungeon sets. The story is relative. I thought the base Endwalker story was better than the base Shadowbringers story, which only got "good" by mt. Gulg onwards. (I still think 5.3 was a better ending than the end of endwalker, but you can't quite count that when comparing the 2 expansions, we haven't seen the patch content for endwalker).

[Adamantini]

...

Well, I see many problems with both races (viera and hrothgar) here:

1: Viera and Hrothgar have paws instead foots in other FFs. It would be cool if they were the unique race that have bestial features like that, but no. SE are not prepared to do that.
2: Viera and Hrothgar have 2 bestial ears that are static. Look at these big F*** ears. When I saw that, the first thing I though was "wow! Imagine these animated ears, like in miqo'te! It will be amazing!". But no, SE are not prepared to animate another ears. IDK how did they do it with the miqo'tes. Maybe it was luck.
3: lack of hair. SE was not prepared to deal with bunny ears and catfolk
4: lack of hats. SE are not prepared to clip some ears and make some adjustments to some hats, but made long hair to vieras, what clip in everything.
5: It's just me, or the hrothgar's tail are too small? I can't imagine their spine be that size. It would be cool if vieras had a rabbit tail too, but it's just mine opinion here.
6: Fantasia to change hair. Maybe it was because fantasia makes money for SE, Jandelaine doesn't.
7: Even with we had a chance to use some hats, hrothgar was not designed to do that. If you try to use the little lady crown, you will see that it will be ridiculous.
8: We pay full price in mogstation gears, but we can't use the hair and hats that come with the gear.
9: every event that gives to us hats or hair, it will be a joke. We can't use them.

For the content, I know. But I was not only talking about dungeons, I was talking about lack of details in the general.

For quests, I was not talking about if I like or not, but there are some holes in the questline. I don't know how to me express properly, because I'm not a native english speaker. But I saw quests who leads you to nothing (or that was mine sensation), as if there were other future quests there, but they were removed in the final production. The entire plot of "the world is ending" is a joke. I can't sense the urgency to save the world, There are just 1 or 2 quests who shows you danger.

sorry for the giant text, I'm just trying to illustrate my point.

[Starshower]

...

1. If they had unique feet, you know very well it would mean they could use no shoes. It would be another thing the community would complain about.
2. Agreed, they should have animated ears. But I think it's because they are part of the head mesh, instead of the miqote where the ears are a separate thing. I don't know though.
3. Agreed, at least they are adding the hair now. I just hope they add ears to the hroth hairstyles eventually.
4. Agreed.
5. I think the tails are fine... it's not too distracting, in ESO the khajiit have these enormously long tails and I think they're kinda funny and distracting.
6. Hopefully this is changing with the patch. If not I'll be the one rioting.
7. Agreed, but I think the crown looks that way because it's accomodating for the ears. I wonder what's their excuse for not allowing hats if they do remove the ears from all hairstyles.
8. Agreed. At least they warn you in the store page.
9. Agreed, but every new hair should hopefully already be made with hrothgar and viera in mind since they removed the limitation.

[Midareyukki]

List.

1: While that would give them more flair, that would actually make them work harder to fit stuff in. And some of it likely wouldn't even fit no matter how you twisted it. This is a compromise that I personally find okay, since it really could be that drastic a change
2: I mean... Miqo'te ears are larger than Hrothgar ears. And those not only got animated, but G'raha even got special animations for his. It really does make Hrothgar look like a "done, move along" deal. I don't know how rabbit ears could work in terms of animations because they are quite large, but it would be interesting to see some effort regardless.
3: They weren't. So far they've done humanoid races. Viera I can kind of give a pass because they are still very much human, even if the rabbit ears are long. Hrothgar would be too alien to implement most of what they had for humanoid characters... yet it would still be doable. And it would look better than whatever "2H Toothpaste Ad Reject" is. After all, Jandelaine's a genius, isn't he? Or is he just talk? If so, I want to either pay less to use him or just get someone better thank you very much!
4: The lack of hats is justified with clipping, but some tweaking would have to be done to work around it. And we have people who've done a good job at fitting the vast majority of models in. Illegal, of course, but the example stands. It's been done.
5: Nah, the tails are fine. I wouldn't say no to longer tails (just look at how Snow Leopards are!!), but at least they don't look like they get in the way of combat.
6: Yes. Fantasia = Money for Square. But really, you'll capitalize on the 2% of people who play this race? If you want that, wouldn't you capitalize on Viera?
7: Ridiculous is subjective. A lot of people find the Uraeus coat ridiculous, the chest gap in the Ifrit armor ridiculous. Shisui's gear can be ridiculous. And have you seen how earrings look on Au Ra? It's not really an excuse that "accessories look ridiculous", it's really just about making them fit. And you can do this early on when designing them to begin with.
8: I'm guessing that's what Pulse is there for? But even so... Do Viera have access to the Lightning hair? As Starshower said though, at least they tell you about it.
9: Definitely. If there's one thing that I'm tired of is the same low-effort reward for events. Before this we used to have full costumes and emotes. Now it's either gaudy housing decorations or stuff some races can't wear. Or if they can, it looks like they didn't design things to suit them.

[Iscah]

1: Viera and Hrothgar have paws instead foots in other FFs. It would be cool if they were the unique race that have bestial features like that, but no. SE are not prepared to do that.

It would have been a massive hold-up with shoe designs if they did that, unfortunately. The best you can do is look into finding shoes with false claws on the fronts, similar to Viera starter gear – I am getting a lot of use out of the Replica Sky Pirate fending/maiming boots for my Viera alt and there are other role-specific things as well. I've been meaning to compile a list sometime.

It would be cool if vieras had a rabbit tail too, but it's just mine opinion here.

I think a tail would just be annoying with gear. I'm happy they don't have one.

6: Fantasia to change hair. Maybe it was because fantasia makes money for SE, Jandelaine doesn't.

I really don't think their intent was that sinister. They just had to arrange things across the character template in an unusual way, and fur pattern customisation took the usual place of hairstyles, so hairstyles became part of faces apparently by necessity. It might have seemed a fair trade in concept, but in reality the number of patterns is limited and largely covered up by clothing.

I think they just underestimated how much importance people place on being able to change hairstyle repeatedly.

[Punslinger]

The game's quality has no sign of being worse this expansion, except for this hrothgar hairstyle issue.

"Okay, but apart from earless Hrothgar, brainless healer jobs, recolored dungeon gear, two Savage tiers so easy they can be done without healers, login servers being broken for weeks on release, DRK becoming a carbon-copy of WAR, and baffling, unnecessary changes to SAM and NIN in 6.1, how has the dev team messed up the game?"

[Starshower]

"Okay, but apart from earless Hrothgar, brainless healer jobs, recolored dungeon gear, two Savage tiers so easy they can be done without healers, login servers being broken for weeks on release, DRK becoming a carbon-copy of WAR, and baffling, unnecessary changes to SAM and NIN in 6.1, how has the dev team messed up the game?"

DRK was already discount WAR in shadowbringers, I think healers are busy and fine, some are really hard to play like ast and sage, and even scholar (I'm a newbie healer, still haven't mastered the role) less dungeon gear is inexcusable, and for savage this is my first savage I'm attempting, and I think the 2 first ones were good starting fights, took my static many weeks to clear them, I think for the first one that was good enough. Even yoshi-p said they wanted to make the first one easy for newcomers and the next ones will be harder. I think that level of difficulty has it's value, not everyone is a seasoned raider. So that proves to you, that all of these complaints are relative. Not everyone is as hardcore as players fixated on hard fights and complex jobs.

[ThivraK]

Honestly, I'm sorry for what I'm about to say, but I think people wanting to quit the game over this are really overreacting. The game's quality has no sign of being worse this expansion, except for this hrothgar hairstyle issue. Viera and hrothgar are getting more hair this expansion, and will keep getting more, maybe all of them by the end of the expansion. Yes, having no ears suck, but it's still more options, and yes, I said options, finally, because you won't need fantasia to change hrothgar hairstyles (finally people will stop saying that). So even if you refuse to use the hairstyles without ears, you will be able to use the hairstyles from the other faces, which is a lot more options than we ever had. It's better even if you refuse to use the new ones. Again, I hope they hear the complaints and make the ears show, eventually. I'm not particluarly happy with the earless hairstyles either. But it's still better than before.

where is the proof for the various things you've claimed in this post?
i.e. all the hair at the end, no fantasia for hair change, them listening to complaints, the game's quality not being worse...

[reivaxe]

the game's quality not being worse...

I'm not interested in partaking in the pity party of it all, so I don't really care to comment on the boo hoos about head stuff, but I just gotta ask ... what is this?
Why do you think the game's "quality" is getting worse?

We just had an amazing 6.0 story. They're bringing Hildy back, making a new side quest line, finally getting into this world's lore with its own 24 man raid series diving into it, they're making new housing zones and wards and fixing things about the process that people have been rightfully screaming about for years (No more Housing savage). They're bringing back Deep Dungeon like content, making Trust an option for all levels, updating old dngs, doing w/e The Island is, adding new PvP modes and redoing the whole of it again for those of us who really want PvP. Furthermore, they did a 24-man Savage last Expac and will very likely do a 3rd Eureka/ Bozja relic zone that expands on that system even more, they're adding glam plates and doubling the dresser size as well as expanding the amount of places you can use your plates. They're doing all this and more as they also work on a multi-step graphics update for our characters and their world ... so how are we in "worse" land?

Because some jobs are having growing pains? That always happens. Because Viera and Hrothgar remain the "monkey's paw" races?


Anyway, reading the above post makes me laugh. Every time I see someone say FF14 Viera should have tails, it just makes it so clear what YP should have done. Shoulda just made-up some race of rabbit women who look like taller Miqote with longer ears and 4 different Happy Bunny like tails ... cause people really just wanted "pretty bunny women". Hrothgar shoulda had Miqote heads with furry-ish faces. Both could have animal feet and limited footwear, people are far less likely to whine about limited shoes than they are to whine about hair and headgear. Simply put, if he knew he couldn't do what people were asking for, then he should have done something that stays firmly within the constraints of this game or waited until they figured out a system to add these races later. Asking people to "Please understand" means nothing when they work off emotion. Now we're stuck with the poo stain of this game in the form of 2 races that act as a reminded to not try to appease people blindly.

[Pip_Chick]

Anyway, reading the above post makes me laugh. Every time I see someone say FF14 Viera should have tails, it just makes it so clear what YP should have done. Shoulda just made-up some race of rabbit women who look like taller Miqote with longer ears and 4 different Happy Bunny like tails ... cause people really just wanted "pretty bunny women". Hrothgar shoulda had Miqote heads with furry-ish faces. Both could have animal feet and limited footwear, people are far less likely to whine about limited shoes than they are to whine about hair and headgear. Simply put, if he knew he couldn't do what people were asking for, then he should have done something that stays firmly within the constraints of this game or waited until they figured out a system to add these races later. Asking people to "Please understand" means nothing when they work off emotion. Now we're stuck with the poo stain of this game in the form of 2 races that act as a reminded to not try to appease people blindly.

I agree with the quality of the game improving, as I think I said, either here or on other platforms. Everything they showed (excluding the Hrothgar hair) was amazing and definitely needed. And I don't get why recoloured armour sets are a problem to be honest, with how much content we got, I think it's fine if they recolour some assets.

Sorry, I am not accustomed to the "Monkey's paw" can someone explain it to me? I tried typing it on Google but it shows me pictures of monkey hands.

In regards to the last statement: 1. Attacking players for an opinion they have (even if it is a stupid one) should not be a thing. I didn't know or care about Viera as a race up until Shadowbringers. Now I know they exist. And I do think they should have made Viera as they did with Ronso. Get the original concept and change it. Aka adding "pretty bunny women", they could still add the males and keep it lore-friendly cause this ain't Viera this is a new race so males are not that rare.
2. Arguing with emotional people that are invested in the subject might be a hard task but not impossible. Just listen to their thoughts and take them into consideration. But don't do 1 to 1 what they said. Your job as a designer is to listen to feedback and find a middle ground. It might be upsetting when people get up in arms about a subject and attack you cause you are the designer, but this just comes with the territory and you need to know how to handle it. I am not saying it's a good thing but it is expected when you work with humans, we are emotional creatures and some are less emotionally mature to handle a subject than others.