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

[Papayatar]

Adding my support for wishing the final result actually looked like the submission and not “inspired by” a la on the same levels of those movies that are “based on a true story”.

I don’t dislike the the hair they’re giving us and if it was themed as “Fresh out of the shower” like how the Early to rise style is a bed head then I’d be fine with that.

Buuut since it’s not that I’m just disappointed at not having a curly/textured style outside the few (2?) we get. Plus it looks fairly flat in the preview, so is something off with the shading too and/or is the hair colour not helping the situation too?

[AQC]

WAIT its supposed to be that entry? i spent so long trying to figure out which one it was when the patch notes dropped like the artist even gave them a lovely cheat sheet for the render how?

[Dragator]

Adding my two cents in the hopes that maybe they'll see how disappointed everyone is by the new hair style, it really looks nothing like what the contest winner designed at all. It's a shame that so many people (including myself) were excited to finally get a nice looking curly hair option only to have... whatever this is.

[IvoryHawk]

they really went for HEE HEEE with this one

[crystal_sanctum]

swiping this under the rug by using "inspired by" especially feels low... representation has been a problem in xiv but also simply in video games in general, so many people were excited when this hairstyle won the contest only to face disappointment from what was released instead

[Cadbur]

literally just properly set up an account on the forums specifically because of this, extreme disappointment to see one of the actually really solid and potentially great step forwards contest winner hairs get altered to such an extent. i thought the point of winning the contest was that your hair would be in the game, not a poor facsimile of it?

[NovalisCrystalis]

Hahah yeah...I agree tbh but I also wanna believe that the preview is bad at the same time I feel like *maybe* they tried and couldn't figure it out properly hence "inspired by" cause they know it aint 1:1

[Avoidy]

Visual modders have been making better curly styles for years in Blender, for free, alone, and then putting them into this game. I'm not advocating anyone use them, but I'm just saying you can't act like it's a game issue when fans have been doing curls just fine for years.

[Kari_J]

Didn't think this would be my first forum post, but this sucks.

This is legitimately a slap in the face both to the designer who submitted the style and to the POC who were hopeful to actually have a decent curly style for once. You did such a good job with representation in DT, how are we still struggling with this most basic step now? You could have made a brand new style, or made one that actually represented POC, and instead you split the difference and made an ugly style that doesn't do either.

Se, fix it, please. You can do better.

[aftergold]

This is ridiculously insulting to the artist's original vision and to all of the other people who submitted hairstyles to this contest, winners or not. All this is 'inspiring' is complete disappointment, especially after the graphics update—clearly SE has the resources to decorate Dawntrail with some incredibly gorgeous, stunning zones and make wonderfully beautiful gear with the new shaders and textures, but not to make a single hairstyle even remotely true to the submission.

I hope this hairstyle gets updated to better reflect the artist's original submission. A lot of others have said it, but I was looking forward to the variety of new hairs to come in Dawntrail; players have been asking for hairstyles that are long, curly, textured, and anything but the basic 'short & straight' for years and years. By this point, SE should be capable of making a hairstyle as the artist depicted. There's absolutely no excuse for why they have the resources and ability to do everything under the sun but make a curly hairstyle. Seriously, why?

Edit: I literally cannot believe they're updating ARR zones to have more detail and better graphics but they implemented this hairstyle to look like... that. Besides the host of other issues that SE has with hair (look at how there's patches for human ears for hairstyles made accessible for viera and hrothgar that nobody apparently thought to fix), this is sloppy. I hope this hair gets fixed because the shoddy work is unacceptable, notably so after their graphics update that they're still working on. Black players and players of color shouldn't have to be dealing with such limited character customization options that get limited even further when a winning entry of the hairstyle contest gets butchered nearly beyond recognition. I really hope they listen to player feedback on this.