We agree that something seriously went wrong on the development side and that fixes need to be implemented, the sooner the better. Feeding into people who either are deliberately trying to get a rise out of you or expressing their opinion, regardless of whether you think it's "inappropriate" or not isn't the good look some Hrothgar players think it is. They are not the target to aim for, and the last thing Hrothgar players need to be doing is getting into heated arguments that result in forum bans.
I still maintain that the development team was clearly out of their league when it came to this whole project and that the expectation of making them "as beastly as possible" culminated in the situation we find ourselves in now. Trying to pass off WoW-style allied races as full FFXIV races was not something that was ever going to work out without severe backlash from the FFXIV playerbase.
The logical way in which the Hrothgar race could have been implemented without the chaos that later ensued is the following:
- *1* base round head shape that can accommodate the various in-game hairstyles and 4 unique faces for that head shape
- No hunchback
- The highlander build which generally looks better in armor due to no stretching of textures
- More expressive eyes
- Eyebrows for more than just one face (and from what I understand those eyebrows were only added at some point during Endwalker)
- No genderlocks and releases at the same time as the female variant
The result of this would have been a far less controversial product that strikes a good balance between catering to beast-race enjoyers and the otherwise anime style loving FFXIV crowd. The drama that erupted over gender locks and stereotypical "male" vs "female" races would have also been avoided. However, instead of choosing the logically sound option, a wrong turn was chosen at every other juncture. For what reasons, no one can say, all I know is it resulted in widespread unhappiness, frustration, and anger on all sides.
Continue being vocal about the issue but please do better in your arguments *in support of needed Hrothgar updates* rather than taking aim at people who are not fully aligned with you. Draw up concepts of what hairs/hats can and should look like on Hrothgars. Draw and post the racial hairstyles you want to see added for Hrothgar. The development team literally took the fan art that was on the first page of the male Viera thread and turned that into reality, so the same is still possible for Hrothgar, assuming that cooler and more convincing voices prevail.




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