VIERA AND HROTHGAR COMPLAINT MEGATHREAD

[HollowedDoll]

I'm not sure that's the reason. They seem to try and standardize the placement of these types of items to account for the largest features you can choose on a face, but Hrothgar's sloped forehead and lack of a human nose make the positioning more difficult without it clipping into the face.

It would be nice if they went and had a closer look and adjusted some of them though, those examples Midareyukki showed are pretty dire.

This is precisely the reason and you can't really win because it'll either clip or float, since characters have a relatively wide range of options that change the head silhouette, they'd need to some reworking of the system to have multiple options depending on customization, but it seems like a lot of work even if they did 3 basic distances.

[Allegor]

I'm not sure how true this is anymore. Yes, Hrothgar have been neglected for a long time and still is, but I think the ears controversy was a wake-up call for Square Enix. Ears are back, they stopped giving us tiny heads like they did almost 95% of the time with ShB helmets, a good chunk of the new hairstyles actually fit our heads now..
It seems there's a conscious effort on their part.
Being a Hrothgar now feels much better than it was just a year ago.

EDIT: (Now if we could get SOME NPC representation instead of absolutely nothing, it would be nice.)

Loosely related but I just played the EW MSQ again and there's a Hrothgar among the Sharlayan forum members and I could swear he wasn't there before.



*EDIT* apparently he was always there and I somehow managed to miss him. I'm getting my Hrothgar fanclub card revoked for this. Jokes aside, that begs the question of how could Sharlayan possibly get Bozja/Hrothgar lore wrong when there's one literally on their seat of power lol

[RobynDaBank]

Loosely related but I just played the EW MSQ again and there's a Hrothgar among the Sharlayan forum members and I could swear he wasn't there before.

You can look up some Endwalker MSQ videos from around 6.0 release date if you want to cross-reference this scene. I'd help but I feel somewhat unwell so too lazy...

[ReynTime]

I'm not sure how true this is anymore. Yes, Hrothgar have been neglected for a long time and still is, but I think the ears controversy was a wake-up call for Square Enix. Ears are back, they stopped giving us tiny heads like they did almost 95% of the time with ShB helmets, a good chunk of the new hairstyles actually fit our heads now..
It seems there's a conscious effort on their part.
Being a Hrothgar now feels much better than it was just a year ago.

EDIT: (Now if we could get SOME NPC representation instead of absolutely nothing, it would be nice.)

A brand new trust for 7.0 that is a Hrothgar and not another godsdamned scholar would be a breath of fresh air.

[RyuDragnier]

Jokes aside, that begs the question of how could Sharlayan possibly get Bozja/Hrothgar lore wrong when there's one literally on their seat of power lol

Clearly it's because his family has been raised in Sharlayan for generations, so they don't know how the normal social structure for Hrothgar is. This is partially me joking, and partially me coming up with a logical reason to explain it.

[Midareyukki]

Clearly it's because his family has been raised in Sharlayan for generations, so they don't know how the normal social structure for Hrothgar is. This is partially me joking, and partially me coming up with a logical reason to explain it.

This was my headcanon also. That some Hrothgar there are Xth Generation Hrothgars, with little to no contact with their former country or culture.
Allegor is still right though xD Okay so you tell me that the bastion of all knowledge can get right so many things for about as far, remote and isolated as Garlemald and Doma, but they can't spare a thought for Bozja where an entire race lives?
To quote a certain fun Final Fantasy protagonist:



Apologies for the profanity.

they probably don't put in as much effort because they know the hrothgar playerbase is already very minuscule compared to other races) that's not to say i don't like hrothgar, that's just what census data tells me

Fun fact about your race, the Male Vieras: When the Hrothgar Ear fiasco was going on, I checked and posted on these forums a fun little image. You know what the census data told me? That months after your implementation you did not outnumber us. Hrothgar outnumbered Male Viera. The numbers are higher now and have been since at least October 2022 (might have surpassed it earlier), which is fine, but don't think that you weren't a massive minority even below us for about half a year despite all the hype built around you. And yet you guys had more updates than we did for years before you could actually, properly outnumber us. And I checked as well. We outnumbered others on Active Players at Endgame as well, just not Male Viera.

It's not just "oh you're a minority". You were one once too, and still got the devs to work for you.
Half a year of being an actual minority with the only majority being your female counterpart? Gets updates.
Three entire f***ing years of absolute silence and being told we're a minority all the time? No update, and the one update we get squishes our heads and sends our ears into the void.

I'm sorry to grinkadboy, I'm not against you. But to hell with the argument that we're a minority, and therefore justifies no further focus on us, honestly. Even if the statement itself is true, it's clear SE doesn't see it as justification. Not in practice.
Sure, you can say "We were just implemented, so it's to be expected". But given the hype? And given how we waited for years only to have it be a handwave? It just doesn't seem fair.

I'm not sure how true this is anymore. Yes, Hrothgar have been neglected for a long time and still is, but I think the ears controversy was a wake-up call for Square Enix. Ears are back, they stopped giving us tiny heads like they did almost 95% of the time with ShB helmets, a good chunk of the new hairstyles actually fit our heads now..
It seems there's a conscious effort on their part.
Being a Hrothgar now feels much better than it was just a year ago.

EDIT: (Now if we could get SOME NPC representation instead of absolutely nothing, it would be nice.)

I did make a post on this thread a while back. Specifically about asking where we now stand and what our feedback should focus on, rather than constantly focusing on the stuff that's already been resolved. There's still work to be done, and Hrothgars having a bit more relevance and representation would be nice. Otherwise yeah, SE did realize chopping our ears was very unfortunate, and that has gotten fixed.

[Midareyukki]

To be fair, I can't check the post because it's buried under a lot of trash, and the image is undated. Imgur doesn't help either. I'm not going to expect people to believe it simply out of my word, so feel free to dismiss the image itself.

And if it looks like it bothers me, it's because it does. Because I don't like half-assing stuff when I try to explain why I'm upset at things that are constantly regurgitated at the Hrothgar race all the time that ends up devaluing us and excusing dev oversight and quality assurance. Again, the person saying it doesn't bother me, they probably aren't even doing it out of malice. But the argument itself bothers me, and so many people have used it in an effort to discredit our feedback.

Overall? Kazhar is right: Hrothgars have had more and better updates, and we've now established a pattern for what we can expect in the future.

I feel that what we need the most is our lore being further explored and taken seriously. Because saying one thing, and then going like "Ah but your lore no longer counts because of a technicality" is ridiculous. The same goes for Vieras who, unlike us Hrothgar, only have the intro to an Alliance Raid to explore ANYTHING involving their lore. And you know what that is?

Fran looking at Orbonne Monastery and be like "Ah yes, my sisters guard this place, but it's nefarious".

....amazing worldbuilding right there on a race who definitely deserves a bit more than just "We guard these scary doors".

[Pip_Chick]

...amazing worldbuilding right there on a race who definitely deserves a bit more than just "We guard these scary doors".

To be fair they are at least consistent between the shards, the Vii's from the first also guarding scary doors.

But in all honesty, I am 100% in favour of more lore about them, both Hrothgar and Viera deserve better representation. We already have a lot of lore on Miquo'te (from the U tribe in Thanalan, the M tribe in the Peaks of Gyr Abania and some lore of the G tribe from G'Raha, I may be forgetting more, but these are the ones that came to mind atm), Au'ra (with Xaela having the Steppe and some representation in Ishgard if you do the DRK quest and Raen having the underwater city and Thavnair), Elezen (Having both Gridania and Ishgard), Lalafel (with Ul'dah) and Hyur (them being everywhere).

I would like the other races to have some time to shine, like visiting the Roegadin homeland and learning more about their culture. Venturing through Dalmasca and learning more about the Viera of the Source. And possibly try to salvage the burning dumpster that is Bozja, by giving it to a good and passionate writer that doesn't want a torture fest (would use the other terminology for it, but I will be put on the naughty list). Maybe visit the Bozjan resistance and see how are they doing, you know out of courtesy for helping ASAP during the final days. ... Just saying...

[RyuDragnier]

Want to know what I want? For us to reach the New World and encounter a tribe of Hrothgar living there, in a location that looks eerily similar to Cosmo Canyon (because why not?).

[grinkdaboy]

don't worry, i didn't take it personally. i can tell you're a passionate sort of person and it's that passion from you and others like you who helped them realize that hrothgar needed more work. i'm just speaking to the logic se probably has when dealing with this stuff. they plan their patches a certain way so you don't really see much course correction until later in the expansion, and even then it's only a half measure until the full measure happens at the next expansion's launch. something that kind of bugged me about viera lore too is how coincidentally viera culture is identical on the source and on the first. they might do something later down the line is what they were doing with the raen au ra is sticking them in places (terncliff in the shb trial questline, as well as thavnair) to expand them more.