(for the purposes of this thread, replace the words 'curly' or 'textured' with 'african-american', 'african', 'ethnic', or whatever depending on how you're feeling at the moment--just know that I'm not talking about the curls you might imagine on, say, a ginger or someone similarly european, even though the game is lacking hair for them as well)
When I play MMOs, I like to build my character's appearances similarly to my own, but as a person with many blacker qualities this can range from semi-annoying but possible to almost demeaning or outright impossible depending on the game. Thankfully we're past the dark ages where half of every MMO had options for skin color amounting to 50 shades of sandy peach and a single shade of 'dark chocolate mixed with charcoal' (looking at you, early-2010s Mabinogi), but sadly we haven't really gotten to that point with hair.
It seems to be a trend among MMOs, especially Korean/Japanese MMOs, to have god-awful options for curly/textured hairstyles. I'm not entirely surprised or disappointed to see that FFXIV falls in line with them... but it would be nice to see a little more variety.
Take, for instance, the afro. The word 'afro' inspires a number of hairstyles that share that general poofiness, from the classic afro, to afro puffs, to the cruddy, coils, shaped up, etc.
Or if you want something with looser hair, you can go for long braids, waves, sisterlocks, twist out, etc., or just let it get frizzy and it works.
So many things you can do with textured hair. So many possibilities. Some examples: https://imgur.com/a/cvjEIV6 https://imgur.com/a/kxsKmBR
Now let's see what XIV has for us.
Sigh...
I remember when I was a sprout, resigned to using the pompadour ironically because I couldn't find anything that fit better. And then I heard that there was an afro for sale in the Gold Saucer! Perfect!
No, not perfect. It's quite possibly the ugliest hairstyle in the game (in my opinion), a spherical disco fro smashed over the head like a helmet. Yes, it's a hairstyle that people actually wear in real life, and it can look good... but the implementation of it in XIV 1. is god-awful, 2. was obviously made with the ironic 80s disco theme in mind, and 3. hurts especially when it's the only hairstyle with this texture in the entire game, Saucer and Online Store included.
I know that, due to their more homogeneous culture and racial demographics, Japanese media tends to either pretend black people don't exist or hit them with some nasty (though admittedly funny) stereotypes, but since so much of their playerbase these days is American, wouldn't it be cool if they, y'know... added some customization for those Americans?
Of course, not having these customizations certainly hasn't killed the game for me, nor is it even the biggest thing I'd want to be changed. But since we're redoing all the visuals anyway, it would be nice? Maybe?
I probably should have said something about this months ago...