6.2 Hrothgar Update

[Neoyoshi]

Wouldn't it be something if they took all of this feedback and out came something 10 times worse then that Karen haircut you all got?

Not to poke fun but I just feel bad for you all at this point.

[Kazhar]

Wouldn't it be something if they took all of this feedback and out came something 10 times worse then that Karen haircut you all got?

Not to poke fun but I just feel bad for you all at this point.

I'm honestly not sure if there is a single haircut that look worse on Hrothgar than the Karen one, ears or not.
I just expect them to pretend we don't exist for a few more years. They got really good at this during Shadowbringers.

[Doc_Seraph]

Kupo, climb up past the developer ladder to where the $$ flows if you wish to point blame. kupo <3

[Kazhar]

Kupo, climb up past the developer ladder to where the $$ flows if you wish to point blame. kupo <3

I think when people say dev, they include the entire management. Not the workers who probably didn't get a say in the matter (and even worked behind Yoshi-P's back to give us glasses... which tells us a lot about the identity of the man who isn't interested in giving us basic glamour options).

[Kelev]

i'm sorry to be blunt ... someone ...THE SERVER CAN'T HANDLE IT ... are just talking out their ass.

This is not true. While the server is not involved in the raster operations, the server's certainly involved in character display. Here's why:

Imagine:

1) I had a Hrothgar with highlights in my tail, and custom fur patterns and all sorts of eyebrow selections. All of that data has to live somewhere. If it didn't, then I'd be able to do things like look differently to other people by playing on a different machine. Some data like gearsets does live client-side, but if I could do things like display arbitrarily complex faces, there wouldn't be that limitation. So that's a storage issue that lives on a server. Can't tell you if that's the limit that's important, can tell you that logically, that lives at Square.

2) When you see me in game, your client doesn't take my word for it. You're making a call to a server, which is sending a packet of information containing my entire identity to you. The only other way of doing that would be for me to send it to you peer-to-peer, which would mean that people who have bad internet would show up more slowly than people who don't, and create a holy host of security issues. Since all of the bones I have are alterable by things my height, etc, it stands to reason there's a limitation somewhere that if I sent you a jumbo packet that operation performed every time I see someone new in Limsa would be a lot of data - not for you, but for the server. So the low data usage you're talking about actually points to the server being the limitation. Your client doesn't care because it's chump change to it.

3) If the server were not involved, you wouldn't see re-use between models. As I've said, Hrothgar tail length is re-used from the Roe musculature. If the footprint - network or storage - were unimportant, that data would be a new variable, and we might get a tail length AND a muscle slider. We wouldn't lose bones from our ears when things got added to our jaws, tails and whiskers. This indicates that there is a limitation on model complexity, and since modders can change that, that limitation isn't client-side.

So, unfortunately, the server is involved, either from a network or storage standpoint. There's simply no other explanation for it. And while you are correct, interpretation of that data is client-side, otherwise you couldn't change things like screen resolution, the actual communication of my character has to be sent from an authoritative source - and there's only one of those.

So, who's that guy jumpin' in saying the server's involved?



Dis guy. And I have looked into it. A bunch. I've spent the last three months trying to figure out why it's so hard, because YoshiP ain't so forthcoming with the "whys" of things.

[XiRon]

Those aren't even remotely comparable. One just "looks" goofy and the other looks flat out anatomically uncomfortable and impeding.
And I mentioned I don't think Miqo'te should be having their ears flattened either.

I thought the point of these countless Hrothgar complaints was to have SE treat the race with more respect? So what, you guys would rather they keep half-assing gear design for races with animal ears by IGNORING the ears completely?

Have fun then chaps. Sometimes I forget this is the community that saw the ARR dungeons join the fray of faceroll hallway sims and then clapped.

Well to begin with in order for them to HALF-ass something there would have to be an ass in the first place. There is 0% ass here.
Secondly, "uncomfortable" is up to PLAYER and how they interpret their character. You are arguing an entire gear slot shouldn't work because you don't think players should have the option to say "I like this on my scrimbly wolbo" and that is crap.

I. Want. The. Gear. Slot. To. Function.
If something looks awkward or whatever I can use that handydandy hat toggle hrothgar and viera have thus far 0 reason to have on their character page to begin with. "Impending" girl there are dozens of facemasks, eyepatches etc that do nothing to impede my ability to assault enemies. You are arguing discomfort or impediment that as far as gameplay is concerned does not exist. Nobody in the game has trouble casting spells if they have some kinda mask over their mouth wtf is the point of your argument here? Just to coddle the devs so in 2 weeks Yoship can say "oh well realistically in my fantasy game wherein you punch the physical manifestation of being sad in the throat viera or hrothgar might feel uncomfy wear a trilby :-/ so thats why yet more gear doesn't exist on your models pls to be understanding"?

[XiRon]

I'm honestly not sure if there is a single haircut that look worse on Hrothgar than the Karen one, ears or not.
I just expect them to pretend we don't exist for a few more years. They got really good at this during Shadowbringers.

If they don't say jack during either 6.2 PLL we know we ain't getting shit the rest of the expansion so mark your calendars and prepare to be forgotten once again

[Kelev]

If they don't say jack during either 6.2 PLL we know we ain't getting shit the rest of the expansion so mark your calendars and prepare to be forgotten once again

I'll one-up you.

If you noticed for the three PLLs before Viera hair got released, we saw concept sketches, prototypes, even Yoshida saying "So you can see this hair is so pretty, you can tell we've been working hard to get it out the door."

Meanwhile in Hrothgar-land?

"Hrothgar are going to have to be patient, you'll see in 6.1"
"Hrothgar hair is coming."
"We need more time to research Hrothgar hair."

But never a plan. Or a picture. Just we're working on it. Be patient.

So if you don't see prototypes, and mockups, and a discussion as to what they did? Say, some details other than "You have to think of the ears as inside the hair," and then not even showing us one profile view? Xi, the patch notes were incorrect - it said the two hairdos (which they never showed us the sides of) would be available at any point from the aesthetician or fantasia. But they weren't. One was. One wasn't. There was so incredibly little effort, they didn't even check that part.

Have you ever noticed when something is hard, Yoshida spends a little time explaining why it's difficult? Why it is that these things require dedication and time and resources? Have you noticed when these forum topics come up, people don't have to rely on drooling brutes like me to explain software-development issues, and I "get" to spend page after page explaining why it is that this must, from a development standpoint, suck to deal with? That's because when they've done their impact analysis, they tell us.

No effort was made to educate us. No explanation was given. No time was spent researching what the player base wanted.

So mark my words: If there's no more than 60s spent saying "Yeah, we're working on it," and no pictures/prototypes, and no attempt at explaining why this is hard, and what the game plan is?

Woe betide.

-Kelly

[Kelev]

There's nothing server-side.

While you are correct that the sentence "They can't do what modders do because they are limited by the engine on everything server-side" is non-sensical, there's plenty server side going on. Why on earth would you design one race with ears attached, and static, when every other race in the game doesn't have that? A friend of mine sent me these pictures - don't ask me where they came from, I don't mod, to a large extent because I want Square to FIX. IT., I don't advocate third-party tools, and I'm not smart enough to do this - in fact, I'm barely housebroken. Also, would love it if my account didn't get banned.

But here's a Viera noggin:



And here's a Hrothgar:



Why, if we weren't missing ear bones would they have ears attached unlike every other race in the game? Why, if there weren't a server-side limitation, either network, or storage, would that be the case?

Don't get me wrong, it's not "technically impossible" - but it is hard, and will require re-factoring the models, or doing performance testing, or augmenting storage or something. So there are certainly server-side issues as well as the client-side issues such as clipping.

When I say "the problem is hard" that's because Hrothgar have a lot of moving parts to them.

So, the problem is hard, because you have client, network, race-design, data storage, and character customization issues all in one tidy little package. In other words, a mess.

And again, so that we are all really, really clear about WHOSE SIDE KELLY IS ON, this is not acceptable, and it's indicative of them not fixing Hrothgar correctly in three years. Adding hair and hats and physics to Viera is relatively trivial by comparison by two design decisions - all Hrothgar skull geometries are different, and there aren't enough bones.

That's why I keep saying "Hrothgar are in beta." We are living, breathing prototypes who were never standardized, which isn't bad, but when you monkey with something after it's out, there are a lot of ramifications to doing so. As a matter of fact, while I've listed a lot of reasons why this is hard, I do not, for one second think I know all of the issues with which they're going to have to deal. Dealing with the impact analysis and problem domain alone is beyond my ability, not to mention actually implementing such a thing.

We were never future-proofed, or even finished for that matter, and that's why we're so damned hard to rev or evolve. Hrothgar and Viera get lumped into the same bucket, but we're not even remotely the same from a technical standpoint.

-Kelly

[SturmChurro]

Hrothgar aren't in beta. They were meant to be one and done: NO updates. It wouldn't matter how convoluted the process of their creation is, if they were never meant to get further updated.