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

[Clawheld]

Came to the forums knowing there would 10000% already be a huge thread.

PLEASE make the hair be good, instead of bad. I want to see the cute screenshots people take with that incredibly cute original hairstyle. What's the point of having these pretty skies and other updated graphics if the character in the foreground is stuck with that sad, wet hair??

[joansbones]

embarrassingly bad effort from whoever on the team implemented this hair. feels like they've never seen anybody that isn't japanese once in their life. don't get your hopes up on the other contest winners that aren't perfectly straight hair, those are probably going in the toilet too.

[Jnuhl]

chiming in to voice my disappointment with the new hairstyle as well, as much of an understatement as that is. "inspired by" is such an insult to the original artist that it makes me angry to even think about. and to everyone crying about limitations of the engine: how hard would it have been to just put a curly texture over a rounded hairstyle with more volume? they were able to do it for the horrible joke afro hairstyle, and for the handful of Highlander hairstyles that have a curl or two. what was the point of updating all the graphics if they still can't be used to display hair texture that a LARGE chunk of their player base have naturally growing on their heads? at this point they can take inspiration from many other games that have managed this when they can't. even Animal Crossing has cartoony, low-poly interpretations of textured hair options.

I was excited for this new hairstyle but it just looks so bad and soggy and wet. i'm angry and sad and i hope they can see all the outrage and make a statement about it, at the very least promising to actually implement the design contest winner and not make something "inspired by", if not also apologizing to the artist for this poor excuse of an interpretation of their work.

[Rayne6665]

Wtf is that hairstyle lmfao

[Ricooooooo]

This feels like such a low blow to the people who play this game and have this type of hair, including me. I genuinely thought we were finally gonna get some good POC hair options Madly disappointing

[cooking_da_meatball]

it's quite disappointing how a hairstyle i was excited to see added to the game has quickly become one of my least favorite hairstyle designs in quite a long time. i would prefer that more time be taken (and, frankly, extra care) to recreate the winning hairstyle as depicted in the contest entry, rather than what has been shown in the patch notes.

[Birdbrain]

How are people so sure it's meant to be the style posted in the fan submission? The notes say it was inspired by an 'entry', and it sounds like the fanart everyone is referring to was an actual winner.

Is it not possible this hairstyle was simply based off a non-winning entry that someone else submitted? If there were more defining characteristics present, like a braid or feather or something, it would be a lot more obvious, as is it's hard to tell anything from those low quality preview pics.

[SolArturia]

"inspired by" is doing a lot of legwork lmao

i'm hoping they'll make changes to it to reflect the artist's actual art

[Jnuhl]

How are people so sure it's meant to be the style posted in the fan submission? The notes say it was inspired by an 'entry', and it sounds like the fanart everyone is referring to was an actual winner.

Is it not possible this hairstyle was simply based off a non-winning entry that someone else submitted? If there were more defining characteristics present, like a braid or feather or something, it would be a lot more obvious, as is it's hard to tell anything from those low quality preview pics.

Assuming this question is being asked in good faith, I'd like to draw your attention to the nearly identical hairlines of the entry and the preview:

EDIT: img embed isn't working so https://imgur.com/a/Sw15cJk
(sorry it's sloppy i made it in paint)

Even with the crunchiness, it looks to me to be very clearly meant to be the same style as in the entry

[Salmonking]

Echoing what others have said far more elegantly than I. There is very little resemblance between the winning entry and what appears to have made it into the patch. The texture was conveyed very well in the artwork, and almost none of those details made it in. This is a disgrace to the intentions of the artist who designed the winning entry, and particularly to the Black playerbase who had such high hopes for this hairstyle allowing themselves to feel better represented in the game. Extremely disappointing, and I hope the devs will look into correcting this.