Thread: New 7.1 hairstyle looks nothing like the winning hairstyle from the 2023 contest

It really looks like the character just stepped out of the shower than the contest entry it was 'inspired' by. It's really underwhelming, especially since people have been waiting for that winner to be implemented. Hopefully the hair can be reworked in some of the smaller patches to actually resemble the contest winner.

Doing my rare pop in to the official forums to voice my disappointment here too.
This really just isn't good enough, to sound like a scolding mother. The adjustments and liberties taken with the winner's design by CBU3's staff this time around are appalling. FFXIV is sorely, sorely lacking in more varied options for customisation and this new hair would've been the perfect jumping off point for more curly hairs to be added, but instead the entire concept was washed over in favour of something that looks messy and clumsy. It feels borderline offensive.

Chiming in to agree. I was really excited to see this entry in the contest winners, the artist's work is so beautiful and detailed. They even went so far as to highlight the different layers and sections of the style to make it easier to replicate. "Inspired by" seems like an excuse to just skate past even trying to do it justice. And at least in the preview image, the new "inspired" version looks so limp and bedraggled and makes me wonder why they bothered to include it at all if this was how they were going to do it.

Really hoping that the team will consider and fix this along with all the other revisions and adjustments to the models they've been making. There absolutely needs to be more options for more hair textures and features, and I'd been hoping that this entry would be a step in that direction.

I didn't even realize it was supposed to be this hairstyle until people started pointing it out.

It's really disappointing.
I don't know if the team will do anything about this one, hopefully they do, but they absoltely need to do better regardless.

It's really disappointing that the artist clearly hoped to have more natural/textured hair in the game, was given hope by being picked, and got... this. I get that it's not a guarantee to even get your entry in, let alone faithfully given changes may need to be made to work well, but to change the hair texture entirely is too much. It really says a lot that they can't be bothered to add more than two very stereotypical textured hairstyles to the game.

I really hope they fix this before the patch somehow... I was so excited to see more natural hairstyles but it looks like they barely put any effort in. Even the general texture looks unfinished but the way they did the shape is also really bad.
I'm beyond disappointed with how bad this was butchered.

Yeah, this is bad. The texture of the hair is completely different, I know they can do better. Curls need to be tighter, and the hair should have more volume.

this really is so disappointing. it doesn't resemble the original design. this could've been a way to fill a missing niche and allow players more creative freedom and feel less left out. the current iteration seems disrespectful both to the original designer and to the players who've been asking for a wider variety of hair textures for years. please fix this, and give us more diverse options in character creation in general.